By The Hockey Paper
A trio of Dutch, Belgian and German clubs will lead the way in Europe when the live draw takes place on Sunday for the last 16 of the Euro Hockey League.
The draw will be streamed on Facebook Live, the EHL Youtube channel and on the EHF’s EuroHockeyTV platform at 11.30 CET.
Spain have two representatives while Surbiton are the only English club left in Europe’s top flight competition after Wimbledon were knocked out.
The EHL will return to HC Oranje-Rood and Eindhoven for a week-long spectacular next Easter (April 17 to 22) with the 12th winner of the world’s best club hockey competition set to be crowned. Oranje-Rood were confirmed as host after qualifying on Sunday.
It will feature of the continent’s best clubs including the hosts Oranje-Rood, Germany’s Mannheimer HC, Belgium’s Royal Leopold and Three Rock Rovers who qualified via ROUND1 in Barcelona this weekend.
They will join the pre-qualified sides for the KO16: SV Kampong and AH&BC Amsterdam from the Netherland, Uhlenhorst Mülheim and Rot-Weiss Köln from Germany; KHC Dragons and Waterloo Ducks from Belgium, Spain’s Real Club de Polo and Club Egara, France’s Saint Germain, England’s Surbiton, Russia’s Dinamo Kazan and Scotland’s newcomers Grove Menzieshill.
Oranje-Rood captain Mink van der Weerden said: “Really looking forward to it. It made our task of qualifying for the KO16 here in Barcelona even more important.
“It’s an honour to host as a club. We did a really good job in organising it two years ago and every one of us is really keen to play in front of our home crowd.”
The live draw for the EHL KO16 will take place on October 21 at Oranje-Rood when the club play a home double-header with the men facing Den Bosch and the women meeting HDM.