Blog
SA Hockey Star Austin Smith Signs Up with Incubator Sports
SA National Men’s Hockey Captain Austin Smith has signed up with Incubator Sports (www.incubatorsports.com) to help develop the country’s rising hockey stars. Incubator Sports is an online networking platform for athletes across a host of sports. A South African innovation, the high-tech Incubator Sports platform allows for quick, easy and accurate connections between athletes, coaches, fans, institutions, and support structures like medical & rehabilitation professionals and sports agents.
28 year-old Smith has represented South Africa 125 times since his senior debut in March 2004, aged just 18. …
When selection comes knocking, who’s answering?
The Hockey World Cup gets underway in just 24 day’s time in The Hague, Netherlands. This past week our men’s team should have been in Malaysia competing in the Champions Challenge, but with it being a World Cup year the funds to attend this tournament were sadly just available.
So in place of the Champions Challenge we attended a week-long, intensive selection camp in Pretoria. It was the first time since the 2012 London Olympics that we’ve had a full compliment of players to select from and from what I felt, it’s been the most competitive we’ve been as a squad for many years. …
South African Men’s 2014 World Cup Team
We start our campaign against Germany on the 1st June at 10.30 in the main stadium. Ranked 11th out of the 12 participating teams we have a lot of work ahead of ourselves if we are to finish higher than 10th, our highest ever finish at a World Cup or Olympic Games. This team features a number of changes from the one which finished 10th four years ago. We have a totally new managed team and have only retained ten players from the previous eighteen.
Captaining the team at another World Cup is a huge honour and I plan to use every bit of experience I gained from our performance four years ago to mine and the teams advantage. …
Should transformation be the goal?
Over the past few weeks I have been asked a number of questions regarding my view on transformation in South African sport – and more specifically in hockey. As a national player and captain it’s not always an easy topic to discuss. I do, however, feel it’s important that sportsmen and women are free to give their opinions without prejudice or fear of selection ramifications down the line.
My entire senior playing career has been soured by the word transformation. I’ve never truly understood what it meant or what the end goal of it was. Rules of who has to be selected change year by year, and you never quite know even after qualifying for an Olympics or Commonwealth Games if you’ll be allowed to attend or not. …