THE national men's hockey team passed their first test at the Bisham Abbey National Sports Centre in Berkshire, England, with flying colours.
All the players and officials, who will be on a Britain tour for a month, passed the Covid-19 test, and have started training while in quarantine itself.
"The quarantine period will be for six days, but at Bisham, the team can still train at the artificial pitch by following SOP. And since all the players and officials have returned negative results for their Covid-19 tests, everybody is looking forward to the international friendlies," said team manager and triple Olympian Mirnawan Nawawi.
Bisham Abbey Centre, which also houses a historical manor house that gave the place its name, is the home of England Hockey, and its pitches are regularly used by their men's and women's senior teams.
The tour started on Sept 19 with the 23-player squad playing four matches against clubs and seven matches against Ireland, Wales and France.
After two years of training mostly online, national coach Arul Selvaraj finally gets a chance to prepare them for the 2022 Asia Cup and 2023 World Cup qualifiers.
"We will stay at Bishem until Sept 25, and we have started training on the pitch even though we are still under a mandatory six-day quarantine.
"The good thing is that our Bisham Abbey accommodation is just a short 50 metres walk to the artificial pitch and we had our first training on Wednesday itself.
"Our players have adapted fast to the environment and time difference. Food is healthy and is prepared specially for high performance athletes. So we are ready for the matches much earlier than anticipated," said Mirnawan.
The team will warm up against Old Georgians (on Sept 26), Surbiton (Sept 28), Hampstead & Westminster (Sept 29) and Beeston (Oct 1). Then it gets tougher by playing Ireland (Oct 5 and 6), Wales (Oct 9 and 12) and France (Oct 15 and 18).