Jaypee Punjab Warriors News

New Delhi, 16 February 2015: Standing at the 3rd position of the Hero Hockey India League points-table, Jaypee Punjab Warriors will now look for a revenge of their defeat against Ranchi Rays in tomorrow’s match at International Hockey Stadium in Mohali. In their previous tie in Ranchi, Ranchi Rays outplayed the title contenders by 2-1 and stunned the hockey fraternity with their win.

Jaypee Punjab Warriors with their impressive run till now in the Hero HIL 2015 are being regarded as the title contenders this year for the Hero Hockey India League 2015. What has been working for the team is their coordination on the field leaving no gaps to counter their strategy, they are giving a tough time to the opponents this season. Lead by Jamie Dwyer the team looks complete in all departments and they would like to take the form till the Finale and pick the title.

In tomorrow’s tie against Ranchi Rays, Jaypee Punjab Warriors will look for the revenge of their defeat in Ranchi and a motivating win will bring back the moral of the team. On the other side, Coach Harendra Singh’s team is raising their level in every match and displaying an international level performance against the top teams. With three wins and two draws, Ranchi Rays remained unbeaten at their home ground and poise a huge challenge for Jaypee Punjab Warriors. The Ashley Jackson-led team have world-class talents like Barry Middleton, Nick Wilson, Daniel Beale, Birendra Lakra, Mandeep Singh and Manpreet Singh, who have been showcasing outstanding performance against the top teams in the League.

With both teams in the semi-finals already, they will play tomorrow to try out different strategies by rotating their players as well as giving more players a chance to play. While the match will be a kind of both team fine tuning their skills, they will also not leave any stone unturned to get a win against each other.

Before tomorrow’s match, Jaypee Punjab Warriors Head Coach Barry Dancer stated, “In our last encounter with Ranchi Rays, the team showcased a good performance. Tomorrow, we have an advantage of playing at our home-turf gaining full support from the crowd. We now have a much stronger defence line and have worked on our penalty corner conversions. The boys are all primed up to face the opponents with an aim to create maximum scoring opportunities.”

Commenting on their preparations Jaypee Punjab Warriors Captain Jamie Dwyer added, “Though Ranchi Rays have always been displaying its confident side since the beginning to the end of the match, we will ensure not to give away early goals to them this time. We will majorly focus on get the better of their defenders to create more goal scoring options for ourselves. We will be focusing on rectifying the mistakes we did in our last clash against Ranchi Rays and will try not repeating them tomorrow.”

Speaking ahead of the match Head Coach, Ranchi Rays, Harendra Singh said, “Having won so emphatically in the last encounter with Jaypee Punjab Warriors, I am now convinced with the game play that the boys are putting up. Though we have reached in the last game of the league match, we are planning our game match by match and I am sure of my boys that they will be in a better shapetomorrow. Now that we have reached the semi-finals of the league, we will ensure that we go with the pace of the game and try keeping the ball possession on our side.”

Ranchi Rays Captain Ashley Jackson said, “We are determined to display a great game tomorrow. Our eyes will be on the penalty corner conversions and circle penetrations. We have worked on it and we still make certain that we do not give any gaps for the opponents to counter our strategy. We believe that we will repeat the results as our earlier encounter.”

Jaypee Punjab Warriors will play against Ranchi Rays on 17 February 2015 at 1900 HRS in Mohali.

The match will be telecast LIVE on Star Sports