Indoor Hockey Men’s World Cup bronze medallists South Africa feel they have put African hockey on the map with their recent dream triumph in Croatia.
The BlitzStokke ended their campaign in Croatia on a high, beating Belgium 6-5 in a pulsating bronze medal match at the Zatika Sports Centre in Porec.
They had also secured notable wins over European champions Poland in their final pool match and a 6-0 thrashing of Iran in the quarter-final.
Head coach Justin Rosenberg feels they have won the respect of the hockey world.
‘We put Africa on the map. But more so, we put South Africa on the map,” he said.
“We competed with three out of the top five nations in the world, we beat two out of the five and that, for me, is massive.
“All of a sudden the likes of the common teams that go to the World Cup and are know to actually win medals, we competed and we beat them convincingly.
“Iran were silver medallists, bronze medallists at previous World Cups.
“The likes of Poland were European champions and also World Cup medallists.
“We beat those guys.
“Now all of a sudden the respect gained from those countries and the support we gained from them coming out of this World Cup was phenomenal.
“And they said to us they’ve never seen a team with such flair and such ability to just forward and express themselves in the way that we did.”
Mustaphaa Cassiem was named player of the tournament for his unparalleled display of skill and flair in scoring 17 goals at the tournament for SA.
The BlitzStokke also won an extra place for Africa at the next World Cup by finishing in the top six.
For Rosenberg it was the culmination of a journey and realisation of a dream that had started at the last World Cup.
“We had this dream coming out of the last World Cup in Pretoria in 2023. We only made the quarter-final and we lost 6-4 to Holland in that quarter-final,” he said.
“We said we don’t want to have that same feeling, we want to be in a position to put ourselves in contention for a medal. And that was a dream that we stuck with for two years and it became a reality.
“You could see the emotion on every single player’s face, that it finally came true.”
Next up for the local-based players will be the interprovincial tournament in Johannesburg with their provinces.
The next international series for the team will be in Malaysia, where they’ll compete in a four nations or six nations tournament. The format hasn’t been decided.
In December, they will be back in Cape Town to defend their Nkosi Cup title.
Rosenberg feels if they are to push on and turn ‘dirty gold’ into gold, they will need corporate backers.
“I think hockey is on a massive upward trajectory and we need to make sure we gain momentum to get corporates involved to give the guys the funding to get more medals.
“Every time we go into massive competition we always can compete.
“But we need to make sure we get more funding to play against the best teams in the world, so that medals become a norm within hockey going forward,” he concluded.