Players scale hotel walls at midnight, visit Kalinga Stadium
Bhubaneswar: Players and their superstitions are well-chronicled in the annals of all sport. However, the Belgium team participating in the Men’s Hockey World League Finals (HWLF) here took it to a different level, Friday night when they jumped over the wall of the hotel they are staying in the Jaidev Vihar to pay a visit to the Kalinga Stadium.
All the players scaled the hotel walls to reach the stadium with the security personnel having a torrid time chasing them down. But then, why did they commit such an act?
Team sources informed Saturday that Belgium players believed that it augurs well for them if they visit the stadium at the stroke of midnight.
Their action reflected their faith in the superstition that they would win the World Cup when the city hosts the event next year. They managed to do that by not only hoodwinking the hotel security staff but also the policemen on duty around. The state government is really lucky that nothing untoward happened to any of the players; otherwise it would have certainly brought Orissa a bad name.
Captain of the Red Lions Thomas Briels confessed to the nocturnal adventure after the game against Spain, Saturday. “Yes we had visited the stadium to develop a personal bond with it and the city as well,” stated Briels.
“We will have to play the World Cup here next year and we wanted to familiarise ourselves with the venue. And we felt the best time to visit the stadium would be midnight. This is a venue where we lost to India in the quarterfinals. We don’t want a repetition of that next year. Also, we got to understand the city better,” he added.
Briels however, said it was a mistake on the part of the team not to have informed the security personnel about their plans. “They panicked and they were justified in doing so. But we wanted to keep things hush-hush,” he said with a smile lighting up his face.
Talking about the performance
of the side, Briels said he was
satisfied with the show in spite of making an early exit in the quarterfinals. “We won four of the five games that we played… that’s quite good,” Briels said. “It’s only against India, we failed and the boisterous crowd affected our performance,” he added.
Rajendra P Mohapatra, OP