Thursday, March 28, 2024

Hockey World Cup: Germany invite ‘party for all’ after India exploits

Bhubaneswar — Christopher Ruhr said Germany will host the mother of all World Cup-ending parties after Die Honamas landed a first major title for 10 years on Sunday night.

Germany fly home to Frankfurt and land on Monday night, travelling onwards to a raucous reception via bus (yes, they can finally get on it after their late heroics in east India over the last five days) at Cologne’s Rot-Weiss Köln clubhouse where six of Andre Henning’s side play club hockey.

Ruhr said: “The whole team is coming and everyone is invited so it will be a huge party. Just now it feels surreal. I am empty and it is quite unbelievable.”

Germany went to town and incurred fines on their vast boat after London 2012 gold, but despite their energy-sapping last week, they will surely summon one last effort – and keep it fine free- in a landmark moment for hockey. From back to front, led in attack by the brilliant Niklas Wellen, they landed the title in style.

“There’s no option of giving up, especially in a World Cup final,” added Ruhr. “There’s a good opponent that you have to push through. We showed in the last two games we are capable of doing it in 60 minutes. And in the end you could tell that Belgium was tired and we deserved to come back.”

Germany continue their comeback fairytale in the World Cup final PIC: Worldsportpics

With German hockey relying on success for funding from the Olympic body, this win will do wonders for the sport – as well as ticket sales ahead of EuroHockey 2023.

Ruhr added: “It’s huge. We didn’t have the best years in the past. We did have the bronze medal in Rio which was huge. But we were always just there but without closing it off. Now we have it. We deserve it so much, sacrificed so much and played amazing hockey and hope it brings a bright future.

“We know we can win decisive games and it’s great for our attitude towards the Euros and Olympics next year.”

The 29-year-old is also a medicine student but given his workload here and recovery after party gold, he admitted: “This has to be second choice at the moment and will be for the next few weeks. It’s good to have something else other than hockey and maybe in a few months I will start studying again.”

Double shoot-out hero Thies Prinz said: “These past weeks have been crazy, unbelievable, ups and downs and at the end we are world champions.

“Maybe it’s out story to concede goals to play like this. Hopefully next time we score the first goal but at the end if we win then I’m okay with it.

“We knew it would be hard of course. It was a neck breaker at 2-0 as we started so well. With the penalty stroke… we got back in the game, even if Tom didn’t score with this one. It was a great save from Vinny but that was the turning point. We knew that we could do this and we knew it from previous games. 

“And the goal before half-time was important and in the end we all knew that we could change this game and turn it around.”

Total Hockey

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