New Season launch by FIH Promising to be “League of the Best”!
Dublin, Ireland: Following their inaugural season in the FIH Pro League 2023/24 Season 5, and a strong showing at this summer’s Paris 2024 Olympic Games, the IRL Senior Men’s Hockey team are back in international hockey’s topflight, having been invited to participate in the upcoming FIH Pro League 2024/25 Season 6.
Ireland is the ninth and final team to be confirmed in the Men’s competition for Season 6. It comes despite being relegated in Season 5 and is the result of New Zealand declining to participate. Season 6 will see them compete against the eight best teams in the World including Olympic Gold medallists The Netherlands, Olympic Silver medallists Germany, Olympic bronze medallists India, and last season’s Pro League winners Australia.
The 2024/25 Pro League season will get underway in November and Ireland will play their first fixtures in December in Argentina. This will be their second consecutive season in the Pro League.
Season 6 was launched today by the FIH, and it promises to be more exciting than ever before. As was the case for last season, the winners of the “League of the Best”, across both women and men, will gain a direct qualification for the 2026 FIH Hockey World Cup in The Netherlands, Belgium.
New for Season 6 also is that all participating teams, with the exception of Ireland as a late entrant, will host matches locally, therefore promoting one of the original principles of the Pro League which is to connect teams and athletes with their own fans by playing home matches. Furthermore, the tournament schedule, which runs until June 2025, has been created in such a way that most teams will have played a pretty similar number of matches at any given time, making the League far easier to follow.
Commenting on today’s announcement, IRL Senior Men’s Head Coach Mark Tumilty said:
“I am delighted that we have been given the opportunity to participate in the FIH Pro League 2024/25 Season 6. It is an excellent and invaluable opportunity to compete against the top nations in the world again. It will give real impetus to our programme as we build on the progress made in 2024 and it will provide an opportunity for younger players to get exposure to matches against the top nations very early in the new Olympic cycle.”
FIH Hockey Pro League 2024-25 stage:
- Hangzhou, China (30 November – 5 December 2024)
- Amsterdam, Netherlands (30 November – 9 December 2024)
- Santiago del Estero, Argentina (10-15 December 2024)
- Sydney, Australia (4-9 February 2025)
- Argentina (19-24 February 2025) – venue tbc
- Bhubaneswar (tbc), India (15-25 February 2025)
- Valencia, Spain (7-8 June 2025)
- Amsterdam, Netherlands (7-15 June 2025)
- London, Great Britain (14-22 June 2025)
- Antwerp, Belgium (14-29 June 2025)
- Berlin, Germany (21-29 June 2025)
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