PHF announces national U-18 league
LAHORE, Aug 6 Pakistan Hockey Federation's (PHF) National Junior U-18 Hockey League will be held under flood lights at the Hockey Club of Pakistan Stadium in Karachi from Sept 1 to 18.
Featuring 10 regional teams from Karachi, Larkana, Quetta, Peshawar, Abbottabad, Faisalabad, Sialkot, Lahore, Multan and Islamabad, the league will follow a new format where the matches will be played in three sessions of 25 minutes each.
Trials to select the teams will be held on Aug 18 in all the cities fielding teams to be followed by a 10-day training camp for the participating teams to be held under the supervision of qualified coaches at all the respective centres.
The PHF also announced two million rupees in prize money with Rs700,000 for the winner, Rs500,000 for the runner-up and Rs300,000 for the team that comes third. Meanwhile, Rs100,000 will also be awarded to the best player in the league, while the best goalkeeper and the highest goal-scorer will get Rs50,000 each. In addition, Rs5,000 will also be given to the man of the match of every encounter.
There will be prizes for the spectators too. All the participating teams will be franchised and discussions to telecast the matches live are also in progress with TV channels.
It may be mentioned here that the PHF in the past too had organised a league for seniors, which has not been held for several years now.