30th March 2017: In the only European clash at World League Round 2 on 28th March Russia (WR: 22) finished second in Pool B with a comfortable 4-1 win over Switzerland to set up a quarter-final face-off against Chile.
The Russians did most of the damage in a seven minute period either side of half time, with Nikolay Yankun giving his team the lead ahead of the break before penalty corner efforts from Denis Shchipachev and Semen Matkovskiy took the score to 3-0. Jan Hödle pulled one back for the Swiss in the 44th minute, but the three-goal cushion was reestablished a minute later thanks to a second from Yankun, completing the match scoring.
The quarter-finals will take place today, with Canada playing Switzerland at 1315 (Local time UTC/GMT -4) before Russia take on Chile at 1530. Japan face Barbados at 1745 ahead of the USA versus Trinidad & Tobago fixture at 2000.
Like all the Round 2 events, the competition in Tacarigua – which is located around 20 kilometers inland from capital city Port of Spain – consists of teams that came through the first phase of the competition and nations that were automatically given a bye through to Round 2 due to their higher placement in the FIH Hero World Rankings. The highest ranked teams will enter the World League at the Semi-Final stage of the Hockey World League which will take place in this summer.
The top two finishers from the men’s Round 2 events in Dhaka (4-12 Mar 2017), Belfast (11-19 Mar 2017) and Tacarigua, (25 Mar-2 Apr 2017) are certain to qualify for the Hockey World League Semi-Finals, being joined in the World Cup qualifier phase by the two highest ranked of the third placed finishers from those three events. Malaysia and China took the top two places at the event in Dhaka, with Egypt (FIH Hero World Ranking: 20) finishing in third place. In Belfast, Ireland claimed a first place finish ahead of France, with Scotland (WR: 27) taking third position.
To learn more about how the teams progress through the competition in the hope of reaching the 2018 Hockey World Cups, click here, with more details about all of the HWL events available by clicking here.
You can keep track of the tournament in Tacarigua on the official competition pages by clicking here and on FIH’s social media channels using the #HWL2017 hashtag.