2006 World Cup, Monchengladbach, Germany (6-17th Sept)

[jayakris]

Ah, the shame of it.  Needing these foreigners to come and tell us how to "revive" our hockey.

I repeat for the n+1th time, "Mr. KPS Gill, have you no shame at all, sir?"

Jay

[suresh]

Gill gave an interview to NDTV yesterday -- I did not get to see it and have not been able to find transcripts of it on the net.
I did however see some blurbs from the interview -- two of them stick in my mind. One was that he knew that we would get
thrashed by Holland because we have the worst defensive line in India's history. The other was that he offered to quit in 2003
and that he stayed on because numerous fans of hockey and other well-wishers wanted him to stay on.

Need I say any more.

[PKBasu]

I hope this FIH/IOC intervention works, because it is the last throw of the dice to save Indian hockey.

To repeat after Jay to KPS Gill (national police hero, hockey anti-hero par excellence): Have you no shame, sir? To claim that he offered to resign in 2003 is utter nonsense. That is when Indian hockey had sparkled momentarily to life with a promising performance in the Champions Trophy (albeit one still blighted by the last-10-minute-blues) and superb stuff in the Asia Cup and Afro-Asian Games. And that, of course, is when Gill sowed dissension in the team by dividing the Punjabis from the "South Indians", dropping Dhanraj, and beginning the shenanigans that decimated this team by the time the Olympics came around in 2004.

[Sandeep]

Here is the link to Gill's interview (the one Suresh was referring to)

India's hockey boss defends flop

Some ridiculous quotes

"When I took over the IHF (in 1994) I had said I needed 10-12 years to bring a turnaround in the sport. And I believe that has happened .

"I want to live in 2003 when we won the Asia Cup and also won the Afro-Asian gold medal."

Sure it did, bad to worse

Gill, who was credited with crushing Sikh separatist militancy in the northern state of Punjab in the 1980s, said the media pointed fingers only at hockey and ignored India's bad displays in other sports.

"When it comes to accountability, is anybody talking about the football team's recent 1-7 defeat at the hands of Saudi Arabia?" he asked.

"Had (Sachin) Tendulkar not done well, the cricket team would have crashed on its face the other day (in the DLF Cup in Malaysia).

"Is anybody talking about that?" the 71-year-old Gill said, rubbishing demands that he make way for a fresh administration.

[ssp]

KPS is unbelievable. Which planet is he on?

[jaydeep]

Very shocking comments from KPS ..

But then Baskaran also isn't far behind KPS comments ..

`Players refused to learn from mistakes'  - Baskaran

Now check some of comments -

"I believe that given our potential, we should have finished in the 5-7 category and certainly not 11th. But then, we wasted too many chances and our penalty corner exercises — both offensive and defensive — were not up to the mark,"  - (Who was teaching them and keeping eye on their drills?)

"Some of our special players have not been professional enough to learn from their mistakes and avoid repeating them," - (Tell the names, so we will get to know true story)
"We have time and again brought the lapses to their notice, but there is little that a coach can do if they keep repeating the mistakes," - (In simple language Coach doesn't having any control on the team, then how we r expecting that this man going to turn our fortune?)

"I wouldn't blame physical fitness, but I suspect that our players were not mentally strong enough to survive the final moments,'' - (What a conclusion after important tournament like World Cup!!!  )

5 Players recieved Yellow Card - Kanwalpreet Singh (2), Prabodh Tirkey, Hari Prasad, Viren Rasquinha.

In 7 matches we conceded 39 penalty corners of which 15 were converted and received 22 with managed to convert 4 of them.

Jaydeep.

[gbelday]

http://ia.rediff.com/sports/2006/sep/19hocklead01.htm

"Incidentally, India finished ninth in the 9th World Cup, 10th in the 10th and 11th this year, in the 11th edition of the tournament."

So assuming we finish 12th in the next world cup, the big question is after that?  Are we going to be out of the top 12 or we start at 1?

[ssp]

gbelday,
I fear we may not qualify for a major tournament in the near future.

It won't come as a surprise to me as I can see a pretty depressing downward trend in our play each year. We may produce the odd good result every 2-3 years but the next big thrashing is never far away because we are so inept tactically.

11th is a fair reflection of our play. We conceded 39 PCs. Against the top teams it is more like 9-10 in a single game!! Many PCs are conceded because of panic defending & trully awful trapping. It doesn't take a genius to realise that some of our defenders are way out of their depth or too slow & should be retired right now! I'm referring to Kanwalpreet & Dilip Tirkey (who has done great serice to the country). How can we hope to win games with our current mindset. 1-0 up is never going to be enough. I've lost count of the games we have thrown away after being 2 goals up with 10-15 from the end. We have contrived to lose when 3-0 up with 7 mins to go!! WHY??

Because we IDIOTICALLY scoop the ball away straight to an opponent's stick from our D!! We use our feet instead of sticks in our D to stop the ball. We get yellow cards. We hack at an attacker's stick...we do all the most stupid things imaginable...

Modern hockey is decided by PC conversions. If you give away 10 PCs in a single game you are going to concede 3-4 goals (on a good day!! & more if your goalkeeper has a bad day). Then we contrive to win 2 PCs in an entire game & also manage to lose the 1 'decent' drag-flicker we have in the entire country to a freak accident ...well,  we are going to score sod-all from PCs. There is no hope when the this happens in game after game. No variations are worked on...no defending of PCsis sorted out before a game...just so amateurish.

World Cups are for the best teams on the planet & we do NOt belong among the best any more. From being top 4 we slipped to 5-6 in the early 80's & the slide is getting ever faster.

DOES ANYONE IN THE IHF CARE?