SA men’s indoor hockey coach Justin Rosenberg is ready to give other teams stick when they start their FIH Indoor Hockey World Cup 2025 campaign against hosts Croatia on Monday.
The previous hosts reached the quarter-final at the last World Cup in Pretoria, and will be hoping to push on this year. The tournament is being played in Porec, on the western coast of the Istrian peninsula.
Rosenberg admits it won’t be an easy task in a tough pool that also features World No 1 Austria, and Poland, although the mood in the camp is upbeat.
“We’re in a really tough pool, we’ve got the hosts Croatia first up then we play the No 1 team in the world, Austria, and we finish our pool against Poland, who’s ranked one below us. So competition-wise, it’s of the highest calibre,” he told Independent Media Sport exclusively from Croatia.
“It is one of the toughest pools in the World Cup but our objective firstly and foremost is to get out of the pool in the top two to qualify for the quarter-final, which is what we did in the previous World Cup in Pretoria two years ago.
“And then from there, the main objective, which is the ultimate objective, is to make the semi-final of the World Cup.”
He said the Nkosi Cup in December, where they beat the likes of Ireland, New Zealand and Namibia in winning back-to-back titles, had been a great help in their preparations.
The experience at the last World Cup had helped too.
“The one thing we did come out of that with was (the need to) back ourselves and our ability. We need to play this brand and style of hockey we believe we’re capable of, and put the fear of what we’re capable of in other teams rather than us focusing on other teams,” the coach said.
“Our brand of hockey is something Europeans don’t get to face every day, and when they do play against us, they sometimes don’t know what to do or how to defend or play against us, which we did show in patches of many games.
“We’re trying to make sure we sustain that for longer periods to get better outcomes.”
It helps when you’ve got the likes of the Cassiem brothers, skipper Dayaan and younger brother Mustapha, in your arsenal.
But Rosenberg feels there’s far more to the team than the mesmerising duo with magic hands, touch and game intelligence.
“Our biggest strength at the moment is obviously we’ve got a lot of lethal weapons in our team in the Cassiems and Hans Neethling and Dalpiarro Langford.
“We’ve got a really strong defensive structure, our two goalkeepers Loggies (Anton van Loggerenberg) and Cullen (de Jager), and some massive experience in the back in the likes of Justin Domleo and Jethro Eustice, as well as Rusten Abrahams.
“And we’ve obviously got cool, calm and collected individuals like Leruo (Ditlhakanyane), Keegan Hezlett, and Litha Kraai is a special character with an X-factor that’s never been seen before from such a young player, so we’ve got a lot of the things going for us.
“Defensively, we worked really hard on our penalty corner defence in the last couple of weeks to get that into place, and we’re looking forward to seeing how strong that is.
“And then our short-corner battery, we’ve got a plethora of flickers that can obviously do a lot of damage. So, those are some of our greatest strengths going into many games.”
With such a power-packed and balanced line-up, rival teams had better watch out.