SYDNEY, July 31: Australian coach Barry Dancer on Thursday admitted he wouldn’t be satisfied with anything less than back-to-back Olympic men’s hockey gold medals as the squad flew out for Beijing.

Asked if he would be satisfied with his world No.1 ranked side returning to Australia with anything other than a gold medal, Dancer said: “Not really. We’ve sort of come with this ambition. I don’t think we’re going to hide that fact, I think to get less than a gold medal would be disappointment definitely.”

Dancer and co-captain and two time world player of year Jamie Dwyer anticipated Australia’s major rivals for gold medal would be Germany, Spain, the Netherlands and possibly Korea.

“However, teams like Great Britain and Pakistan in our pool particularly and I would expect teams like New Zealand in other pool would seriously contest semi-final places,” Dancer said.

“We are happy with draw, the first two games against Canada and South Africa are going to be difficult,” Dwyer said. “Then we play Pakistan and you never know, they can beat you 10-0 or you can beat them 10-0. Then we play the Netherlands game after that so that’s always close and then we finish off (in our pool) with Great Britain.”—Agencies