NEW DELHI, Oct 3: World champions Australia believe another successful defence of their Commonwealth Games title will be the perfect springboard for an Olympic Games assault in 2012.

But three-time world player of the year Jamie Dwyer has warned his team-mates that complacency could prove to be a barrier to that ambition as they look to add New Delhi gold to their World Cup and Champions Trophy wins.

“We've had a really good 20 months under [coach] Ric Charlesworth and this is the last major tournament before we have to start concentrating on London,” Dwyer said. “We really want to put in a good performance, bring home a gold medal and that would cap off a great two years.

“We want to build a dynasty and it's going to be very hard and it's a challenge, but we don't feel extra pressure because we're winning. We like winning and want to keep winning.”

Dwyer said although the Kookaburras were raging favourites to win at the Delhi Games there would be no complacency.

“I want to win at the Commonwealth Games and the Olympic Games — that's my two main team goals,” added 31-year-old Dwyer, who struck the winning goal for Australia in the gold medal match of the 2004 Athens Olympics.

Australia will be returning to the scene of a memorable triumph to start firm favourites in New Delhi.

It was at the Dhyan Chand National Stadium in March that the Kookaburras won the World Cup after 24 years by beating defending champions Germany 2-1 in the final.

Charlesworth's all-conquering team then went on to clinch their third successive Champions Trophy title with a 4-0 rout of England in the German town of Moenchengladbach in August.

Australia are set to extend their stranglehold of field hockey which was introduced as a medal sport in Kuala Lumpur in 1998.

The Aussie men have won all three competitions so far, while the women bagged two, with the Hockeyroos failing only once in Manchester in 2002 when they finished third behind champions India and England.

India's national coach Harendra Singh conceded Australia's flair and power-play will be hard to match in the 10-nation men's competition.

“They showed at the World Cup that they are the best team around, it is up to the rest of us to make sure they don't win easily,” Singh stated.

Resurgent England are expected to be Australia's closest challengers, while floundering Asian rivals India and Pakistan look for a spark to revive memories of their past glory.

Coach Jason Lee's England finished a creditable fourth at the World Cup and then qualified for the title clash of the elite six-nation Champions Trophy in Germany.

India, once the masters of field hockey with eight Olympic titles, failed to qualify for the 2008 Beijing Olympics and were eighth in the 12-nation World Cup on home soil.

Pakistan, now coached by Dutchman Michel van den Heuval, hope to make amends in front of Indian crowds after the former four-time champions finished an embarrassing last in the World Cup.

India and Pakistan are drawn with Australia, Malaysia and Scotland in a tough group from which two teams will qualify for the semi-finals.

England head the other group which has New Zealand, Canada, South Africa and Trinidad and Tobago.

The women's competition promises an interesting tussle between England, a World Cup semi-finalist, and Australia, who surprisingly failed to reach the last four in the showpiece event in Argentina earlier this month.

The competition will start under a technological cloud after it was revealed that the video referral system, which has been used at all major tournaments since 2006, will not be functioning here. —AFP