Friday, 29th March 2024 04:37
Home / Sports / Leicester City FC swap boots for hockey sticks in BetStars Shootout

What happens when you pitch members of Leicester City’s Premier League winning team against the best of Team GB hockey?
Well first off you get your camera ready. Then you ask if they fancied pitching their talents against each other in a BetStars Challenge.

This is exactly what our friends over at BetStars did as Danny Simpson, Marc Albrighton, and Christian Fuchs of Leicester City FC swapped football boots for hockey sticks to see if their soccer skills would transfer to the hockey pitch.

Hoping to prove them wrong were Maddie Hinch and Helen Richardson-Walsh of Team GB’s gold medal winning hockey team. After they provided a quick introduction to the game, hero keeper “Mad-dog” Hinch challenged the players to a penalty shootout – the perfect way to put their new found skills to the test.

danny_simpson_marc_albrighton_christian_fuchs.jpgHelen Richardson-Walsh and Maddie Hinch, with Danny Simpson, Marc Albrighton and Christian Fuchs of Leicester City FC
The challenge was simple. Each player would get three attempts to score past Hinch.

You might think this would be relatively straight forward for Premier League winners like Simpson, Albrighton, and Fuchs, but they were up against arguable the best keeper in hockey right now. Hinch rose to national prominence at the Olympic Games in Rio this year where she saved all four penalties fired at her in the final against The Netherlands. That was enough to secure gold and permanent hero status. This would not be easy.

Albrighton though managed to succeed where the Dutch failed, scoring two of his three penalty attempts. There was less success for Christian Fuchs and Danny Simpson who only managed to find the back-board on one occasion while Simpson was unable to score.

Following the hockey shootout, the challenge took an unexpected twist as the Leicester players took football penalties against Hinch, before Christian Fuchs padded up to try his hand in goal.

Albrighton was clearly happy with his performance in the challenge:

“It’s an absolute honour to win the BetStars Call It trophy; it’s one of my proudest moments perhaps even surpassing winning the Premier League title.”

Speaking about the players’ performance in the challenge, Hinch said:

“I think they did well, they focussed a bit too much on me at times rather than the ball, which meant there were a few swings and misses. They’ve definitely got plenty to work on but it was a very good effort and they managed to score a couple of good goals.”

betstars_helen_richardson_walsh_maddie_hinch.jpgHelen Richardson-Walsh and Maddie Hinch of Team GB
“We like a challenge at BetStars, so pitting champions from two sporting worlds against each other is right up our street,” said Zeno Ossko, Director of Sportsbook, BetStars. “After a bit of coaching from Helen, it was surprising to see that the Leicester boys were a lot better at scoring past Maddie than the Dutch were in the Olympics. Congratulations to Marc who came out on top – you can back him at 14/1 to score first against Palace on Saturday.”

To see exclusive footage from the BetStars Hockey ShootoutChallenge, click below.

 


Stephen Bartley is a staff writer for the PokerStars Blog. Follow him on Twitter: @StephenBartley.

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