LAHORE, Sep 12: Pakistan Hockey Federation (PHF) is considering to skip routine trials for the selection of Pakistan team for the Busan Asian Games hockey competition.

“One of the choices for us is to forgo trials this time and to select the team with mutual understanding and discussions with the team management and selectors”, said Brig Musarrat Ullah Khan, secretary, PHF Thursday.

There are a few strong reasons which are restricting the national federation not to conduct trials, less time for the camp training and not to disturb the combination which won bronze in the Champions Trophy.

PHF official fully agreed to these two major aspects and said the camp will begin from Sept 16 at Lahore and the team leaves for South Korea on Sept 24 and in between less time is left to organise trials to go through a lengthy process of selection.

“Secondly we are considering to make most wanted changes in the side which played in Germany, replacing injured players”, he said.

Musarrat said he will be holding a series of meetings with the team management from tomorrow (Friday) and similar meetings with selectors also to discuss the final selection of the team.

Team manager,Col (retd) Zafari has ruled out any possible changes.

Zafari expressing dismay over the poor performance of ace penalty corner shooter Sohail Abbas for not giving his one hundred percent in the tournament said the player has to improve the level of his conversion.

Musarrat endorsed the views of the manager but said it all depends on the selectors and management and if any change is deemed necessary it will be made for overall improvement.

“If selectors feel or the management think that a player is not physically fit or lacks fitness or is facing injury problems naturally we have to bring a change we cannot afford to have injured players in the side”, he said.

He said in the camp training efforts will be made to improve physical fitness of a few players indicated by team manager.—APP