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Hockey South Africa CEO Phikolomzi Mbuqe says South Africa will not travel to the FIH Hockey World Cup merely to make up numbers, but to compete and challenge the world’s best.
South Africa’s men's and women's teams will both compete at the upcoming World Cup scheduled for 15-30 August in Belgium and the Netherlands after qualifying by winning their respective African titles last year.
“I think progress will be a point that we will be making. If you look at the teams that we played during the December and January period, against the Netherlands [men’s] and Germany [women’s], it shows that we have good intentions in terms of our teams progressing forward,” said Mbuqe
“I think if you look at the women’s current ranking, they are 20th in the world. Hopefully when we do better we’ll get into the top 16, and that would be a good achievement for our side in terms of making progress.
“I think the gentlemen are also in a good position to elevate themselves, currently ranked 12th in the world. It would be nice to finish within the top 10, but we are progressively looking at improving our participation because we are not not there to add numbers but we are there to compete.”
He says the World Cup provides a platform for the teams to increase their world rankings, which is what drives him.
The former operations manager at Gymnastics South Africa says it will be difficult to determine whether there will be an easy draw for South Africa ahead of the FIH Hockey World Cup draw scheduled for 17 March 2026.
“Look, I think it’s going to be difficult to determine that because the draw on 17 March will indicate the pool stages, which pool you’re in and which country you will be based in.
“For example, if you’re in Pool A or Pool C you will be based in the Netherlands, while Pool B and D will be in Belgium.
“At this moment we still don’t know which pool we are in. We will only find out on 17 March after the last qualifying, when the teams are placed and the draw is conducted to see how our pool will look going forward.”
