Hockey at Rio Olympics

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ssp
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Re: Hockey at Rio Olympics

Post by ssp »

Incredibly, the Dutch are leading Australia 2-0 at half time. Are the Aussies going to choke at the Olympics again?
3-0 now. Indian style collapse.Wow.
I can't believe this. End of some Aussie careers coming up? Dwyer, Kavanagh & Knowles?
Still 3-0 with only 18 mins left and I can't remember the Aussies being so poor. They look ordinary. Dutch strolling this one.
4-0 now off a PC. What a result. Aussies look clueless. Dutch are playing them off the park. Totally one sided. No real threat from the Aussies at all. Aussie GK is taken off so there maybe more Dutch goals in the last 8 mins.

Finished 4-0. Dutch will play Belgium and Argentina v Germany or NZL.
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Re: Hockey at Rio Olympics

Post by Sin Hombre »

Heartbreak for NZ as Germany score once in the 57th minute and twice in the 60th minute to go from 0-2 down to win 3-2.

Wow.

Wow.

This is even worse than anything I have ever seen from India.
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Re: Hockey at Rio Olympics

Post by PKBasu »

Too late now, but if only we had beaten Canada, India would almost certainly have been in the SF too.
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Re: Hockey at Rio Olympics

Post by PKBasu »

The Germans seem to be rather good at last minute heroics, to put it mildly!

Germany, Holland and Argentina from our group are in the SF. Only India didn't make it!
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Re: Hockey at Rio Olympics

Post by jayakris »

PKBasu wrote:Too late now, but if only we had beaten Canada, India would almost certainly have been in the SF too.
No way! :) ... We would have lost to Spain. We're just not there yet. That is WHY we lost to Canada, I think. That loss itself was not the problem, but what caused the Canada loss was. Somebody or other (like Nikkin in the Canada match) would do something (or many things) stupid, and we would lose when it counts. Walsh never got the time to remove stupidity totally from our system.
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Re: Hockey at Rio Olympics

Post by sameerph »

There may be a fair chance ( about 55-60% I think) that we would have beaten Spain. But, then we would have lost to Germany in the SF and Netherlands/ Belgium in the bronze medal match. We are close but still not good enough to beat these 3 teams in a big tournament so far when everything is at stake like Olympics.
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Re: Hockey at Rio Olympics

Post by ssp »

Under the old format, we would have been nowhere (as usual we finished 4th in the pool). We can not string together 3-4 wins. One good game is followed by rubbish. Even the good performances end up in defeats (Germany and Dutch games here).

We just don't have enough quality players. The best teams have no weak players and 4-5 outstanding ones and their performances do not dip alarmingly like our guys, who look good one day and then absolutely pathetic in the very next game. The other big issue is the lack of a leader on the pitch- someone like Fuerste or VD Horst or Dohmen or Knowles. No calm heads to control the over excited bunch of school kids who give the ball away when just passing it around is the better option or use their sticks as farming implements and gift away PCs or get yellow cards.

Still have miles to go to actually break into the next level. Not sure how we can do this. A coach of Walsh's calibre would a good step, although I'm ok with Oltmans till 2018 WC. Dropping the dross right away is the easiest next step- but this won't happen. We just have to hope 3-4 Harmanpreet type players come through the junior ranks and we somehow get a decent forward or two to back up Sunil.
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Re: Hockey at Rio Olympics

Post by sameerph »

The junior team which went to England recently looked promising based on your encouraging comments at that time, SSP. I guess most of that squad will be part of junior world cup which will be played later in the year. Perhaps, some of them need to be promoted to senior squad replacing the dead wood in our current team. Inclusion of Harmanpreet and Surender Kumar in this squad itself raised the level a few notches, I think .

But, selectors should be ready and competent enough to see that changes are needed. As you have said, right team selection itself coupled with a good coach - even Oltmans would do - can take us up a notch.

As we have seen a coach itself can make a sea change. Even during the period between Walsh and Oltmans, under Van Ass we had looked terrible and back to playing at the level of London olympics. Oltamans has at least brought us back to 5-8 bracket level. Right team selection would be the next easy remedy.

Once that is done, we will have to see if after inclusion of best available talent if we are anyway upto a level of consistently challenging top 4. If not, then go to next more basic level for improving identification of talent and grass roots programme.
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Re: Hockey at Rio Olympics

Post by ssp »

Sameer, there are some good prospects in the U21 squad and I hope they perform really well at the JWC later this year. They also seem to have better basic skills than a few of our senior guys. I'm hoping Harmanpreet, Armaan Qureshi and Harjeet will join the U21s for the JWC. We need to win a medal there, unlike the disaster of the 2013 JWC.

Dipsan Tirkey, Gurinder Singh and Varun Kumar in defence, Nilakanta Sharma in midfield and Gurjant in attack look good enough to be given a chance in the senior squad. All of these players did quite well in the last HWL.

The one thing that we can't account for the poor mental strength in pressure situations. That's where a Fuerste type of leader can help a lot.
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Re: Hockey at Rio Olympics

Post by PKBasu »

The Anglo-Indians have completely vanished from our hockey. I guess they all went to Australia, and strengthened their team. (In cricket, some Anglo-Indians still play well at the Ranji level, but there seem to be very few good Anglo-Indian hockey players coming through our ranks any more).
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Re: Hockey at Rio Olympics

Post by sameerph »

Who were the last ones in Indian team ( Anglo Indians ?)
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Re: Hockey at Rio Olympics

Post by PKBasu »

Jude Felix, I think. I remember the 1970s teams had Charles Cornelius in goal, Cedric Pereira as deputy, Michael Kindo (possibly tribal Christian) and before that Vece Paes (1972).
The greatest of course was Leslie Claudius.
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Re: Hockey at Rio Olympics

Post by sameerph »

Thanks, PKB.
ssp wrote: The one thing that we can't account for the poor mental strength in pressure situations. That's where a Fuerste type of leader can help a lot.
Yes, that is very important, SSP to ensure that we do not give away last minute goals. Having a better quality players will help but need mental strength too. I have even seem some one like Harmanpreet ( who is otherwise very good) make a few mistakes in pressure situations. Of course, Raghunath and Rupinderpal are rampant at it.

So, a leader on field is important for that. Not sure who it will be for India. I think Sardara may be on his last legs now unless he is too distracted by his personal troubles and can make a strong comeback. Maybe Sunil.
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Re: Hockey at Rio Olympics

Post by Ranjit »

I think India have to be a bit realistic.

Truth is we were never really medal contenders at Rio - a quarter final exit was probably par for India and that' s what they delivered.
I do think there have been positives - we played reasonably well in the first four games - I think India showed they can certainly compete well with the likes of Germany, Netherlands and Argentina.
Sure - a lot of improvement is still needed for India to break into the top 4 but I think the current side is probably the best we have had since Sydney 2000 - Harendra was correct on that count. LEt's not forget that India won a medal at a world level tournament in December for the first time in 33 years and backed that up with a silver at the Champions Trophy. The improvement has been palpable.

What's needed now is to consistency and the ability to take it to the next level. For this Hockey India needs to realise the virtue of patience - don't chop and change coaches. GIve the next coach 4 years with the aim of breaking into the top 4 at the home world cup and then a medal at Tokyo 2020.
Hockey India have done some good things and are certainly a vast improvement on the IHF. However, they need to realise in elite level sport - there are no quick fixes. It takes time and investment to get results. Look at Belgium - they starting putting together a program and pool of players in 2007 and are now 8-9 years later seeing the results.
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Re: Hockey at Rio Olympics

Post by ssp »

Very nice post Ranjit and I couldn't agree more.
Hope you can post regularly on this forum.
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