Ireland will host the women’s 2022 EuroHockey Championship qualifier event while the Irish men are bound for Calais, France for their competition next summer.
These tournaments are new on the international calendar with the winners of each event qualifying for the top tier of European action in 2023 in Mönchengladbach. That tournament, in turn, will potentially offer a high quota of Olympic qualifying berths.
The European Hockey Federation confirmed the breakdown of events on Thursday morning with both events running between August 21st and 27th, 2022.
The 12th-ranked Irish women will be the top seed for a Dublin-based event which also features Poland (27th), the Czech Republic (24th), Turkey (33rd) and Finland (unranked).
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The venue will be finalised in due course and will provide a first major home event since 2019 when Banbridge hosted the World Series Finals and Donnybrook brought a record crowd for the Olympic qualifiers.
The 14th-ranked men have a tough competition, placed in Qualifier B alongside host side France – 13th in the world – as well as Ukraine (28th), Turkey (44th), Lithuania (62nd) and Slovenia (71st).
Previously, the level of European championship competition countries took part in was on a promotion and relegation basis.
This new format sees four men’s and four women’s qualifier tournaments with one ticket to the top tier championships in 2023 on offer from each event.
The second- and third-placed finishers in each tournament will play in the 2023 EuroHockey Trophy; fourth- and fifth-placed sides go to the third tier while the remaining teams will go into the fourth tier.
2022 EuroHockey Championship qualifiers (all August 2022)
Men
Qualifier A (Ourense, Spain): Spain, Poland, Italy, Portugal, Slovakia
Qualifier B (Calais, France): France, Ireland, Ukraine, Turkey, Slovenia
Qualifier C (Vienna, Austria): Austria, Russia, Belarus, Croatia, Denmark, Hungary
Qualifier D (TBC, Scotland): Scotland, Wales, Czech Republic, Switzerland, Gibraltar, Finland
Women
Qualifier A (Durham, England): England, Wales, Russia, Croatia, Slovakia
Qualifier B (Dublin, Ireland): Ireland, Poland, Czech Republic, Turkey, Finland
Qualifier C (TBC): Belarus, Italy, Ukraine, Lithuania, Gibraltar
Qualifier D (Dunkirk, France): France, Scotland, Switzerland, Austria, Hungary, Slovenia
