Members of the Australian hockey team celebrate a goal scored by Robert Hammond (2nd L) against Argentina during their Men's Field Hockey World Cup match at the Warsteiner Hockey Park stadium in Moenchengladbach September 9, 2006.
Members of the Australian hockey team celebrate a goal scored by Robert Hammond (2nd L) against Argentina during their Men's Field Hockey World Cup match at the Warsteiner Hockey Park stadium in Moenchengladbach September 9, 2006. Pascal Lauener

Australian Men's Field Hockey team are currently the world number one. Coached by Graham Reid and captained by Mark Knowles, they have won two major honours already this year. Having started the 2014 Men's Hockey Champions Trophy as favourites they are now struggling and have a mountain to climb before they can get their hands on the third.

This year has been phenomenal for the Australian Men's Field Hockey Team. In the middle of the year, last June, they won the 2014 Men's Hockey World Cup in The Hague, Netherlands. In the group stages they won all their five matches scoring 19 goals and conceding only one in return. In the knock out phase they demolished Argentina five-one in the semi-finals and the home team Netherlands one-six in the finals. It was an one-sided tournament win for the champions. Mark Knowles was the man of the tournament.

In July, 2014 they participated in the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, Scotland. Again they breezed through the group stages with four wins out of four. They scored 22 goals and conceded only three in return. In the semi-finals Australia defeated their arch-rivals England with a score line of four-one. In the finals they defeated India, four nil to bag the gold medal.

With that spectacular back drop it was expected that the next major tournament will also be Australia's. On the contrary they lost the first match to an unfancied England one-three, Chris Ciriello was the scorer for the Australian side. In their next match they went three nil up against Belgium only to conceded four goals and ended the match at four all. The four Australian goals were scored by Chris Ciriello, Eddie Ockenden, Jacob Whetton and Flynn Ogilvie. Thankfully they came back to winning ways in the final match of the league phase by defeating a tricky Pakistani side three nil with two goals from Jeremy Hayward and one from Jacob Whetton.

At the quarterfinal stage Australia will play Argentina as they have finished third and second in their respective groups. The qarterfinal match will be played on Dec 11 in Bhuvaneshwar, India. If the Australian team manage to win this match, their tournament plans will get back on track.