Laurien Leurink will be the first on Tuesday. She is the only female international to be waved goodbye. This will happen in the half-time of her old teammates’ duel with New Zealand (starting at 5.10 p.m.). Leurink recently decided to end her career in Orange, after she won gold with the Dutch national team at the World Cup in Terrassa last summer. The uncrowned queen of assists was active as an international for seven years and came to 133 caps (29 goals).
In the halftime of the match between the Orange men and Germany, which starts at 7.40 p.m., no less than ten former players of the Dutch national team are put in the spotlight. Billy Bakker, Sander Baart, Bjorn Kellerman, Robbert Kemperman, Mirco Pruyser, Glenn Schuurman, keeper Sam van der Ven, Valentin Verga, Bob de Voogd and Mink van der Weerden will then be in the spotlight for the last time with the Dutch national team. Together they account for 1,614 international matches.
Bakker and Kemperman in the club of two hundred International Caps
Of these ten, Bakker (236 international matches) and Kemperman (228) made it to the most duels in the Orange. They are among the eighteen players with the most caps. Their generation has colored the past hockey years. A large part has played together since the Junior World Cup in 2009. At the time, Paul van Ass was their national coach. Together they grew to the top, one faster than the other. A good number of these ten, for example, experienced the legendary 9-2 victory over Great Britain during the semi-finals of the Games in 2012. This was followed by, among other things, the World Cup finals in The Hague and Bhubaneswar (2014 and 2018) and the European titles of 2015, 2017 and 2021.
Robbert Kemperman, Valentin Verga (Amsterdam) and Sam van der Ven (HGC) are the only ones of this group who will still play top hockey in the Tulp Hoofdklasse next season. De Voogd is still active with his old love Helmond, who will play in the Overgangsklasse next season.
by Hockey.nl
