Black Sticks coach Shane McLeod. Photo / Northern Advocate
The New Zealand men's hockey team are confident of their Olympic chances, despite drawing a tough pool alongside top-ranked Germany and world No 4 Spain.
Their group also contains South Korea, Belgium and hosts China.
Coach Shane McLeod was fully expecting the outcome of the draw, which is
based on world rankings.
"We were predicting that, and it's not too bad. There's a couple of teams in there that are pretty tricky," McLeod said.
"So we are going to head to Europe to get experience. We're going there in June. We play Germany two times and Spain one.
"It's for the sole reason of trying to understand their game a little bit better."
Despite the Black Sticks' relatively low world ranking of 10, McLeod said the team saw the tournament as a real opportunity to prove themselves.
"If you look at the side and our recent results, we're a top six nation and when you are in that top six it's really a case of being able to win one of those key games - in the Olympics you've got two or three of those.
"The game against (South) Korea, which I'm predicting is probably going to be our first game, is a crucial one and if we get through that we come up against Spain.
"Spain are a team that have come a long way but they are probably towards the end of their run a little bit. So if our first couple of games we can manage to score points, it's a relatively easy run through."
The top two teams from each pool go through to the semifinals.
McLeod said he was not envious of pool B which contained Australia, Netherlands, Pakistan, Britain, South Africa and Canada.
"Holland's a team that I don't particularly enjoy playing (although) the team that's struggling a little bit at the moment is Pakistan. If we could have swapped Korea and Pakistan it would have been in our favour."
He said an ideal scenario would be to meet Australia in the semifinals.
The Black Sticks leave for Malaysia next week to contest the Azland Shah six-nation event from May 8-18.
Opponents there are Pakistan, India, Canada, Belgium, Malaysia and Olympic rivals Belgium.
- NZPA
