How hockey coaches have been lambs for slaughter

In seven years, the Indian men’s hockey team has seen as many as five foreign coaches — Jose Brasa, Michael Nobbs, Terry Walsh, Paul Van Ass and Roelant Oltmans — being removed unceremoniously.

Oltmans, the Dutch expert who came in as the high-performance expert and later became chief coach, has met the same fate as his predecessors for the same reason – India’s ‘unimpressive’ performance at the international level.

It’s been the bane of Indian hockey that coaches who are brought in with great fanfare — and with fancy salaries — don’t even last a year and the cycle keeps repeating with monotonous regularity.

Over the years, while the contracts of some were not renewed, circumstances were created where the experts were left with no option but to quit. In Oltmans’ case, he has been given the boot.

Come to think of it, every exit has come at a time when the team is busy preparing for a major competition — this time around, it’s the final of the Hockey World League scheduled in December this year, not to speak of the World Cup, Commonwealth Games and the Asian Games next year, where India are the defending champions.

Every coach brings to the table his own game strategy, and with the appointment of a new coach, the players have to once again start the ‘unlearning’ process in order to mould themselves in the new training style.

For example, before Paul Van Ass, the team was more into defensive hockey blended with Indian style of playing (more of dodges). With him taking charge, the focus shifted more towards attack, similar to European hockey.

At the time when Van Ass quit, a top hockey player had told Hindustan Times that, “If these things (surprise exits of foreign Exit: Stint:

Salary: Appointment: Exit: Appointment: Exit: coaches) are going to happen again and again, it wouldn’t be surprising if we suffer the same horrid fate, which we had in London, in the 2016 Rio Olympics too.” India finished eighth in Rio after losing in the quarterfinals to Belgium.

“Another top player had said that, “We need time to adapt to the training style of the new coach and these changes will have a negative impact. When things were going fine under Terry Walsh (who guided India to 2014 Asian Games gold and helped them qualify directly for the Rio Games) and there was overall improvement in the fitness of the team, he was removed.”

The same process will start again.