Hockey at Rio Olympics

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Re: Hockey at Rio Olympics

Post by jayakris »

Misery just gets nailed down huh?... 1-3 and we're out.
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Re: Hockey at Rio Olympics

Post by ankit1407 »

3-1 ...what a shame...no clue what coach and players had planned for the match in first place...
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Re: Hockey at Rio Olympics

Post by ssp »

Didn't bother watching this one. Predicted 3-1 on the tennis page.
Losers everywhere. After the Canada game, i knew we were done with any more good stuff.
Who will be the scapegoat for this....not the useless selectors. Keep selecting guys like Raghunath, Uthappa, Danish, Akashdeep and what do you expect? Oltmans to be replaced by some shi* guy like Hawgood.

Our teams are never ever going to perform under pressure. All I can say is that at least I was around for the 75 WC win, because for the next 10, 20 or 30 years us fans are just going to get this kind of garbage
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Re: Hockey at Rio Olympics

Post by ankit1407 »

Whatever plan Oltman created for today deserves criticism as well, we never tried to make progress in the game..from 1st minute we were playing useless hockey and the goal also came as a stroke of luck rather than good play..

We are lucky to get away with just 3-1 loss
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Re: Hockey at Rio Olympics

Post by sameerph »

Yes, we did not play anything like we played against Germany, Netherlands and Argentina. I dont what was the strategy by the coach ? Just keep try to get an odd goal and then keep defending ? Everyone should know that it is not possible to do that in modern hockey.
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Re: Hockey at Rio Olympics

Post by jayakris »

I guess everything was a chimera. Was never totally convinced of Oltmans, though I was happy with him, compared to the bunch of idiots we have had bfore (save Brasa to some extent and the great Walsh). Looks like the improvements were basically what Walsh brought in, which Oltmans rode on for a while. Back to square one, and we now look for somebody. Will the fat guy who kicked out Walsh own up, and resign? Fat hope, huh?
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Re: Hockey at Rio Olympics

Post by Sin Hombre »

The fat guy renamed a trophy to his son's name and the Indian media were completely fine with it.
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Re: Hockey at Rio Olympics

Post by Abish arul »

Sin Hombre wrote:The fat guy renamed a trophy to his son's name and the Indian media were completely fine with it.
who is that crap
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Re: Hockey at Rio Olympics

Post by sameerph »

Our HI president.

We had 4 pretty good matches here . In those matches, even our usual bad players -Raghunath, Uthappa, Danish, Akashdeep were trapping and playing well.

That match against Canada really turned the tide for us. Awful match played there hurt us in getting a good draw in the QF and then another bad match against Belgium followed.
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Re: Hockey at Rio Olympics

Post by jayakris »

Abish arul wrote:
Sin Hombre wrote:The fat guy renamed a trophy to his son's name and the Indian media were completely fine with it.
who is that crap
Not crap, but the kind that eats it. That is the honorable president of Hockey India, Mr. Narinder Batra, whom I had very graciously given the name with the slightest insult I could give, "the worm".

If one man managed to make Indian hockey fans yearn for KPS Gill to come back as the federation president, then you know where the level of respect for him is.
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Re: Hockey at Rio Olympics

Post by sameerph »

Another way of looking at it as our present team is anyway not good enough to be in top 3-4 in the world. So, even if we had won against Spain the QF, we would have found it difficult to win 1 more match against the the likes of Germany , Netherlands, Australia.

We have certainly improved under Oltmans from the dark days in London and are probably even with Argentina, Spain, Great Britain , New Zealnd but still much behind Australia, Germany, Netherlands and Belgium who I believe are the top 4 right now.

As SSP always says just the right team selection can get us closer to these teams but will need something more to really consistently get to their level.
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Re: Hockey at Rio Olympics

Post by jayakris »

sameerph wrote:That match against Canada really turned the tide for us. Awful match played there hurt us in getting a good draw in the QF and then another bad match against Belgium followed.
I think we are feeling too bad about the Canada match. We may be over-rating the ill effects of that match. The fact is, this coach could not help remove the players' unprofessional nature. Walsh needed more time. Walsh and Oltmans helped improve things to a large extent, but it seems like we still have some ways to go. If we had won the Canada match, the bad "unfocused" match would have happened against Spain today, and we would be equally sad. If they have improved a bit more and come to the level our tennis teams had reached (LP, MB, SM, RB), we would have made the semis and would have looked "lost" in the first match, followed by "totally lost" in the bronze match. End results would all be the same.

Bottom line: Sports in our country has quite some ways to go when it comes to Olympics. Same for hockey and tennis. Only a couple of individuals (LP in tennis and Saina in badminton) have gotten over the hump and won a medal in sports that need athleticism and quick mental focus/thinking. No team has, since 1964. We need some coaches to throw professionalism into our sportsmen. Walsh was one such coach and we threw him away.
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Re: Hockey at Rio Olympics

Post by sameerph »

Agreed, Jay. I put that above. We simply did not have the team to win a medal here. Still, the variation in performance is puzzling from the first 4 matches to the last 2 matches. Mostly we would have still not won a medal even if we had played like first 4 matches but at least would not looked as useless as we looked against Belgium today. Coach may have to take some blame for strategy in today's match too.
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Re: Hockey at Rio Olympics

Post by ssp »

Belgium are a class team. In my opinion they are 2nd best team in the world behind Australia. So no surprise to lose this one but to play so poorly is not acceptable. We may have had a chance against Spain had we won the Canada game, but ultimately a bronze would have been out of reach as the other teams are just too smart for our erratic guys.

Some good points by Jay and Sameer.

I have mentioned in the past that Batra has put our hockey back by 3-4 years by sacking Walsh and not sorting out the mad selections. Oltmans has been ok and I applaud what he has done after the Van Ass fiasco. Unfortunately, he is working with some really unprofessional players (I'd like to call them something more rude) who lack composure. Decision making is atrocious and discipline is pathetic.

I was encouraged by the Germany, Argentina and Dutch games that we might do something like the CT 2014, HWL 2015 or CT 2016, but there was always the nagging feeling that our weaker guys would just have to show their colours.

I have often railed at the continued selection of 5-6 players and if we followed the Aussie example (in all sports selections), these weaker players would have been out about 2-3 years ago!

I think we may have seen the end of Sardar's career and he certainly looked a shadow of his former self playing as a centre forward. This guy has been our 1 really world class player since about 2009.

Problem is that the useless sh*ts in charge are accountable to no one. So the disgraceful decision to sack Walsh could happen again. The guy who should have been sacked is still there...I'm obviously talking about the 'worm' (aka Ba*trad!).
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Re: Hockey at Rio Olympics

Post by PKBasu »

Woeful loss today.

Notwithstanding, we are at least back in the 5-8 world ranking level that we were at until 2004 or so -- before the really big debacles for our Hockey. The loss of Walsh was a tragedy, which justifiably drove us crazy here. Oeltmans seemed to have somehow pulled together something special over the last year, but that was not to be. The loss of Sunil probably hurt us toward the end of the Canada game and today. But not comprehensively beating Canada was just criminal.
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