Hockey at Rio Olympics

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Re: Hockey at Rio Olympics

Post by arjun2761 »

Agree with most of Ranjith's post but not sure that the time frame should be that long. Hockey is not a sport with a lot of depth (i.e., not played by youngsters in large numbers), so faster improvement should be possible. If the younger players in the current India team and the U-21 talent is blended by a modern coach and physical trainer/nutritionist, we could be competitive with top-4 within the next 2 years.

Of course, we would need to keep U-21 pipeline continuously primed and also have professional opportunities outside the national camps (such as HIL play for a more extended period) which can help to both develop and identify talent.

Not sure what the Belgium program was all about, but I would really doubt if Belgium has a particularly large pool of hockey players. If you have details of what exactly they did programmatically, it would be great if you could share...
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Re: Hockey at Rio Olympics

Post by jayakris »

arjun2761 wrote:Not sure what the Belgium program was all about, but I would really doubt if Belgium has a particularly large pool of hockey players. If you have details of what exactly they did programmatically, it would be great if you could share...
Belgium basically went and got a damn good Australian coach (one with the resume criterion of a top-3 finish at Olympics, Champions or World Cup, that kept asking for since 2003 here). I forget his names ("Commens"?) That was in 2007. He put the program and had them in the top-6 or so within about 4 years, from out of nowhere. I need to go back and dig up where I had talked a bit about it several years ago around 2010 or so (I think when we lost a key game somewhere to Belgium). We kept screwing around with coaches, and that's really our primary problem. The coach should be allowed to select the team and we should drop the stupid '"selectors" which is such a damn archaic concept. I tell you, if we hand this over to somebody good (even Oeltmans) and let him pick the players without anybody's interference, we can well be top-3 or top-4 in two or three years.
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Re: Hockey at Rio Olympics

Post by ssp »

I think a 4 year span is probably enough to improve to the next level. As always, a settled coaching set up is necessary and selections must be the responsibility of the coach. As Jay says, our system of using selectors is rubbish. They can't be trusted to be impartial and have historically made crazy selections (Sandeep, Tushar, Kanwalpreet kept their places for several years. There are many more examples of this kind of lunacy).

As I have said many times before, our domestic hockey scene is a mess. We have knock out tournaments played by the institutional teams, nationals where the best players don't participate and an 'engineered' HIL which has only 6 teams. Compare this to what the Dutch, Brits, Germans and Belgians do. They have proper 6-7 month long competitive league and their strong club culture means youngsters get coached properly (watch their basic skills v our guys) and progress through the system so that there is a steady supply of quality players. The quality of our domestic games is poor.

Our system is great at losing promising players. Then we contrive to keep out coaches of the calibre of Charlesworth and Walsh and drop players like Gurbaj, Affan Yousseff, Jaspreet Kaur and Ritu Rani and many others over the years.

The Belgians have certainly improved dramatically since about 2011 (Jay you were probably referring to our loss in a Champions Challenge final when we threw away a 3-1 lead with 10-15 mins to go) thanks to their Aussie coach but also because their national league has become very competitive.
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Re: Hockey at Rio Olympics

Post by RohitG »

Germans lost 2-5 to Argentina, they were trailing 0-2 right from the first quarter.. I want to know what y'all think about this, is there anything concrete we can infer?
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Re: Hockey at Rio Olympics

Post by sameerph »

Wow, this Olympics hockey competition is turning out to be crazy. Argentina thrashed Germany 5-2 in the semi final and move to the final. That is one team which we had beaten in the group stage and comfortably dominating till the last few minutes.
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Re: Hockey at Rio Olympics

Post by jayakris »

ssp wrote:The Belgians have certainly improved dramatically since about 2011 (Jay you were probably referring to our loss in a Champions Challenge final when we threw away a 3-1 lead with 10-15 mins to go).
Yep, I think you're right. I remember that match. That loss hurt badly, which is why i remember it. Simply unable to do anything smart in the end.

And we saw what Belgium just did to us when they had a one-goal lead with 8 minutes to go. It was a thing of beauty to see how they simply ate up some 3-4 minutes by just playing smart at the two corners. at our end. They did nothing stupid at all, despite knowing they could easily go score on us at that point with an open goal. They didn't let us get the ball at all, and was frustrating the hell out of us. What that stuff takes is coaching, discipline, and being mentally calm (which only comes the from inner confidence that you have been coached right to do it, and that you can trust your team mates to be on the same page as you).
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Re: Hockey at Rio Olympics

Post by yssriram »

What a dramatic semi-final, 5-0 against Germany till 50th minute! Argentines were over the moon, after reaching their first Olympics Final :D :D
sameerph wrote:Wow, this Olympics hockey competition is turning out to be crazy. Argentina thrashed Germany 5-2 in the semi final and move to the final. That is one team which we had beaten in the group stage and comfortably dominating till the last few minutes.
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Re: Hockey at Rio Olympics

Post by Sin Hombre »

NZ should have beaten Germany as well but choked at the end.
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Re: Hockey at Rio Olympics

Post by sameerph »

India should have beaten Germany too but chocked right at the end. :D
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Re: Hockey at Rio Olympics

Post by arjun2761 »

ssp wrote: As I have said many times before, our domestic hockey scene is a mess. We have knock out tournaments played by the institutional teams, nationals where the best players don't participate and an 'engineered' HIL which has only 6 teams. Compare this to what the Dutch, Brits, Germans and Belgians do. They have proper 6-7 month long competitive league and their strong club culture means youngsters get coached properly (watch their basic skills v our guys) and progress through the system so that there is a steady supply of quality players. The quality of our domestic games is poor.
Most searches on the Belgian Hockey League return results for their Ice Hockey league. This competitive league seems to be a mostly amateur club league supported by their hockey federation. Here is one link that I could find. Not sure if most of their players make a great living from hockey like they do, for example, in soccer. In the US, for example, there are many such amateur leagues for soccer, baseball etc. Admittedly, they are run by very dedicated folks and they do follow the basics of nutrition and conditioning, but they aren't anywhere near the class of the top professional leagues in the US (such as the NBA, MLB, or NFL).

HIL which is professional league which attracts many of the best players from the world could easily be made a more effective league than the Belgian league to expose players to high level play if it is expanded to a few more teams and extended in duration. Organizing a lower level league with our institutional teams (instead of simply playing occasional knock out tournaments) is something that shouldn't be too hard to do other than the fact that India has greater distances to travel. However, that too can be solved, for example, by having zonal leagues with only the top teams of each zone play for a national title of some sort. Getting to the level of Belgium's hockey system should not be too hard to do if we have the right sports professionals focused on the job.
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Re: Hockey at Rio Olympics

Post by ssp »

Arjun, I have found this site which has links to several hockey leagues around the world: http://www.flashscore.com/field-hockey/ ... gue/teams/

All the teams, fixtures and results are on this site.

This is the Belgian hockey federation's website: http://www.hockey.be/

The top European teams play in the Euro Hockey League. This is equivalent to the Champions League in European football.
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Re: Hockey at Rio Olympics

Post by ssp »

Very pleased to see Argentina beat Germany and secure their first Olympics medal in men's hockey. Their tactics were brilliant as they blocked the centre of the pitch and let the Germans get to the flanks but then any cross was easily intercepted. Peillat won the game with 3/3 PC conversions and then the skill full Argentinian forwards kept the ball brilliantly. I'll be supporting Argentina in the final as I like their brand of hockey.
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Re: Hockey at Rio Olympics

Post by jayakris »

I will root for Argentina too. It's good for field hockey to have a gold go to a S. American team.
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Re: Hockey at Rio Olympics

Post by ssp »

Just watched Belgium play brilliantly to beat the Dutch 3-1, so all the top 4 ranked teams under performed, although a bronze for Germany or Holland is hardly a failure. For the last year or so, I've felt that Belgium are the 2nd best team after Australia, but having seen how the latter have performed, they are probably the best now!

Argentina are hard to beat and will pack the middle of the pitch so there will be no easy chances for the Belgians.

Overall, there are some unattractive elements to hockey nowadays. Firstly, it is the way PCs are defended. The first runner is running straight at the flicker, risking serious injury In fact, some teams are getting 2nd runner to double team so that the flicker is forced to aim for one side of the goal. The other issue is the way the circle is so crowded that it is difficult to create nice goal scoring chances. Then time wasting in the corners is annoying.
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Re: Hockey at Rio Olympics

Post by RohitG »

So we have already discussed what we lacked, just want to understand how Belgium and Argentina did it? At the start I expected a three way fight between Australia, Germany and Netherland.. We're discussing what Belgium did to reach here, is there a similar story for Argentina? i.e. in terms of coaching, the way they have made it happen? I am quite surprised to see this actually.. so it was possible for lower ranked teams to do it.. We were #5, so where did we miss the plot? And what did Belgium and Argentina do that we didn't?
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