Click to play videoPuri: Even as meeting after meeting is being held by India's hockey officials on the way forward; the players are still shell-shocked by the result.
Former captain Dilip Tirkey who visited the Jagannath Temple in Puri on Tuesday, too, is shocked as the Beijing Olympics would have been his fourth straight Games had the team qualified.
Tirkey's international future is in doubt but he does believe that work needs to be put in at the grassroot level to revive the game and that the bad memories of this debacle need to be left behind.
"These are sad days for Indian hockey as it is the first time that we are not going to play in the Olympics. As a player, I cannot accept that we have failed to qualify for the Olympics. After 10 months we played a bad match and it cost us dear. It was an off day for the team. We played badly in only this tournament otherwise the team is not bad. There are many tournaments coming up and we must practice hard and make our team a strong once again," Tirkey said.
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