The Sports-India Community

"The story of the tournament is that we have had enough penalty corners. We created enough chances but we didn't score off those. If you see today, we were in the circle of opponent for 32 times and they countered 14 times. They scored 3 but we only scored 2. The game is about scoring the goals and we don't do that enough," a disappointed coach Sjoerd Marijne said after the match.

What did he expect with the players selected? Yes, the forwards don't score enough, but let's keep picking the same guys over and over....

So, India-England for bronze in both men and women and Australia- New Zealand final in both.

Quite poor performance by our men if we can't even get a bronze. Overall, other than our pool win over England, we looked quite poor in most of our matches, so not making the finals was probably the right result for the way this team was performing.

If the women can beat England, they will have performed quite well other than their inexplicable loss to Wales in the opening match.

Yes, the men's performance has been quite shocking in the past 3 months -- here and in the Azlan Shah trophy, where we have generally done much better in the past. Oeltmans' departure is now being felt (and his positive impact on Pakistan is already evident). Ominous signs!

Complete shocker from the women as they collapse in the 4th quarter to lose 6-0 !!

Hockey federation needs a long overdue total overhaul.

Neu Zealand beat Australia 4-1 to win gold. In hockey anything is possible.

Dreadful ending from the women. The men will lose the bronze medal match too. They have been playing poorly here and at the Azlan Shah tournament. Another cr*p showing at CT will see a change in coach....and the cycle of defeats will continue.

Didn't watch the men's match today because I just knew we would lose and sure enough it ends 2-1 for England. Pretty depressing showing throughout and women reserved their worst for today as well.

I don't know where we go from here, but some our players are just pathetic and we can not expect them to improve ever so please try out some new blood. All of the men's performances were below par.

Saniapower wrote: ↑Sat Apr 14, 2018 4:45 am Neu Zealand beat Australia 4-1 to win gold. In hockey anything is possible.

That was in womens where New Zealnd are actually are ranked higher than Australia.

In men, Australia beat New Zeland 2-0 to win the gold. They are virtually unbeatable in mens in CWG. Not sure when they lost last.

But, dreadful show by our men. From silver in last 2 games, we have come down to no medal at all in these games.

Yeah, hockey is always there to screw up our happiness. Just when we seemed to be establishing ourselves in the top-5 or top-6 in the world, our worm-gang had to do something crazy like changing the coach and replacing him with some no-name. The no-name looked okay at first, but it looks like it was just the remnants of whatever the previous coach had set up, and he was only messing it up.

Don't know what to make of Marijne. I thought he was doing some good things but last 2 tournaments have been very disappointing. We have zero plan in attack. It's a crash ball every time and in defence, we have reverted to slackness and errors in our own third of the pitch. Most crosses into our D is mis trapped or kicked by our players.

We make far too many basic skill errors all over he pitch and I don't know how this can be resolved, because the culprits are mainly experienced guys and this is the limit of their abilities.

Our selection was flawed because we had only 4 midfielders and too many defenders. Up front we were hopeless. So many times we would get into the opposition circle and our players would do the silliest things. I have been moaning about Akashdeep for years and this tournament was shocking even by his standards. He lost the ball inexplicably almost every time. Mandeep is even more limited and his first touch is usually awful. Unfortunately, Gurjant didn't do much. Lalit was anonymous too. At the back, Amit and Kothajit are not our best options and don't provide any creativity.

I expect most of this lot to be retained again and again. Absolutely maddening nonsense from the selectors. I bet the coach will be sacked after the CT or Asian games, but the dross will remain in the team for the next 3 years at least.

In this era of social media, we should be able to get at least one person with a lot of followers to bring the worm's decisions to scrutiny.

The stats show that we had 35 circle penetrations while England had 22. Yet we had only 1 pc while they had 7. Since all the goals came from pc's, it is clear that this is an area that a good coach can improve...

The stats show that we had 35 circle penetrations while England had 22. Yet we had only 1 pc while they had 7.

This is because of this:

So many times we would get into the opposition circle and our players would do the silliest things.

Almost every time our players just lose composure once in the circle. Both attacking and defending. So we win far fewer PCs than we can and at the other end, gift away too many.

This is a nice article on our hockey performance at CWG-

Commonwealth Games 2018: Flawed team selection and approach behind Indian hockey team's poor show at Gold Coast

Sounds simiar to what SSP has been saying although does not name couple of culprits which SSP has been sounding- Akashdeep and Mandeep.