Anna Flanagan
Going to an Olympic Games is the ultimate competition for any hockey player and something I have always dreamt of doing. I am extremely proud and honoured to be apart of the Australia team, and being able to share the whole experience with all the other athletes and billions of people watching around the world will be the best feeling ever!
How did you feel when you made the team? Excited, nervous, happy, sad for those that missed out, all of the above! And then I immediately wanted to get back into training!
What are you looking forward to most about London? I am really looking forward to our first game and the feeling of stepping out into the full stadium for the first time!
Anna Flanagan's Sport for Women profile
Anna Flanagan's Australian Olympic Team profile
Ashleigh Nelson
What does going to an Olympics mean to you? It means an opportunity to achieve a long term goal of winning an Olympic Gold Medal. It also serves as a reward for the persistence and sacrifices my family and I have had to make in order to play at an elite level.
Ashleigh Nelson's Sport for Women profile
Ashleigh Nelson's Australian Olympic Team profile
Teneal Attard
Hockey 101
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Jargon buster
Green card: Shown when a minor offence is committed that does not warrant a more serious sanction. Two greens equal a yellow.
Yellow card: A player must spend a minimum of five minutes in the sin-bin with the umpire deciding how long.
Red card: Sees a player permanently excluded from the game.
Golden goal: If extra time is required during the classification stages of the tournament, the team that scores the first goal – the golden goal – wins the match.
Penalty corner: Awarded for a variety of different infringements (usually in the shooting circle), penalty corners are taken from the back line, 10m either side of the nearest goalpost. Only five defenders are allowed to defend penalty corners, which are also known as short corners.
Shooting circle: An arc in front of each goal. Goals can be scored only from within the shooting circle.
Basic rules
Hockey is played on a 100 x 60 yard outdoor water-based synthetic-turf pitch by two teams of 11 players. Matches are played over two halves of 35 minutes each on pitches.
Players use hook-shaped sticks to advance a hard ball towards their opponents’ goal, the winning team having the most amount of goals scored.
The team is made up of attackers, midfielders and defenders with each team also having a goalkeeper.
To take a shot on goal, players must be inside their opponents’ shooting circle.
Each nation can bring a squad of 18 to the Olympics and on match-days name a 16-man team. The five substitutes can be rolled-on-and-off at anytime.
In both the men and women’s competition 12 teams will be divided into two pools of six, with each team playing every other team in their pool.
The top two teams from the groups will qualify for the semi-finals, with the winners going head-to-head for the gold, and the losers the bronze.
