BHUBANESWAR : In the final hours before the first semifinal between England and Belgium on Saturday, most of the players and support staff will feel the tension. Even if some of them have already experienced the thrill of playing at the semifinals of a World Cup, having a few metaphorical butterflies is understandable.
England coach Danny Kerry, though, will be unmoved by the stage. He will wear his game face but he will treat it like any other match. Since suffering from a heart-attack when on tour with the women’s team last year, Kerry has developed some perspective on sport. “It (the heart attack) changed me a huge amount,” he said on Thursday. “I have two daughters, five and eight. I was in South Africa (for the World League Semi-Finals in July 2017) when I had the heart attack and I had to have surgery there. Before the surgery, I was actually wondering: ‘will I get to see my children again?’”
That was the moment which made him question life as he knew it then. “It was a moment in my life where you think: ‘okay, what’s more important?’ Make no mistake, the Olympic-winning coach of the GB women’s side still loves the stage. But he sees very differently. “In pressure of big tournaments, you lose perspective on what are the most important things in life. I think that moment has helped me in times of pressure to think: ‘it’s (semifinal) really important to me, but it’s just hockey’. My health, my children, my family... you learn to put everything in perspective.”
Even then, the 48-year-old is well aware of the high pressure nature of his job. In fact, the men’s hockey team is hugely indebted to the work Kerry did with the women’s side at the Rio Olympics. It helped secure funding for hockey from UK Sport for the foreseeable future. “A huge amount (how much did the women’s team gold help in securing funding). We agree a performance target with UK Sport,” he explains.
“We have to put a compelling case for amount of money and what we can achieve, and agree that target. This is the half-way stage for the target and we have to do well to continue with our funding. If we don’t do well at the Olympics, then funding is reviewed. It’s black and white, you hit your target, funding continues. If you don’t, it’ll be reviewed and if you can’t demonstrate why you didn’t hit the target, money may go.”
To ensure that the men’s team, who will be featuring in their consecutive World Cup semifinal, continue the excellent work, Kerry has radically altered the way they play the game at the highest level. “Before I came, we used to be very man-to-man with a deep cover defender. I have encouraged them to play a little more zonal. If we can win the ball then we have people at advanced positions so that gives us ability to counter-attack. And with the ball, we changed system to move our numbers around and attack. There are number of teams that play zone now... Belgium, Holland and a few others. You have to have ability to move around the pitch.”
When the World No 7 faces the Red Lions, the latter will look to catch Kerry’s men with a system they have practiced and preached for the better part of the last six years. And the outcome of the match could rest on whether England have the ability to move that zonal marking around to give their strikers a fighting chance to qualify for their first final in 32 years.