The 2018 edition of the annual ‘FIH Hockey Stars Awards’, to identify the best of 2017, may well have been an award to honour one country’s improbable rise as a hockey superpower in the last decade. Belgium’s Arthur van Doren won ‘Men’s Player of the Year’ as well as ‘Men’s rising Player of the Year’. The Red Lions’ custodian, Vincent Vanasch, walked away with ‘Men’s Goalkeeper of the Year’ gong while coach Shane McLeod coach shared the ‘Men’s Coach of the Year’ tag with Argentine Max Caldas.
Needless to say, the World No 3 are high on hope and confidence ahead of what is an important point in their project. They began their highly ambitious programme to become one of the best hockey nations in 2006. That project had separate pitstops with one end goal. Aptly nicknamed ‘podium’ when the project was ratified by the federation in 2006, the men’s team was challenged to medal at the 2016 Olympics. Which they did in some style. They won the silver, top-scoring with 29 goals in the competition. ‘Podium’ had been successfully achieved, so what was next for one of the newest darlings of world hockey?
Marc Coudron, president of the Royal Belgian Hockey Association (RBHA), provided some clarity during an interview with Lesoir in April. “By 2024,” he had said, “we will at least once, be champions of Europe, win the World Cup and the Olympics with the Red Lions. In the ladies, it will be between 2024 and 2028.”
Those are tall ambitions because of two things. The one frustrating thing Belgium’s golden generation have had to endure in their story to the top is the inability to get over the line in finals. They have beaten Germany and Australia each in the summit clash in the final of the World League Semifinal but that’s really a Mickey Mouse title that nobody remembers the next morning. What their band of super performers really crave is validation in the form of shiny, gold discs at the World League Final or the World Cup or the Olympics or the European Championships.
It’s here that eye-catching performances in the group stages have turned to bizarre stage fright in the final. They have lost twice in the final of the European Championships (once to the Netherlands and once to Germany), once in the final of the World League Finals (to Australia) and once at the Olympics (to Argentina). That plethora of losses suggest there they are not yet quite ready to feel the top step of the podium.
The other reason why their new targets are lofty is because of the competition at the top end of the sport. The one common refrain visiting team captains and coaches have echoed over the last week is the number of quality teams who can walk away with the title. Spain’s coach, Frederic Soyez, in fact, said there were about 7-8 nations who had a genuine chance of fighting for the top three spots.
But Van Doren & Co are not going to die wondering. While other top teams have been diplomatic about their chances in Bhubaneswar, Belgium know they need not be modest when their stated aims are at least feature in the ‘last match of the tournament’. “We will love to play in the last match of the tournament,” McLeod said upon arrival on Saturday. “We hope that the hockey gods smile at us (...) in the end it will be nice to walk away with the World Cup.”
That sort of confidence is running through their veins now. Van Doren, only 24 but already spoken about as one of the best defenders in the modern game, was bullish when asked whether this was the time to deliver for a golden generation who are coming here with bags of experience. “Yeah, we feel really ambitious,” he tells this daily. “Look, if it’s not this tournament then it may be the next or the one after that. We think that we have been developing into a really good side over the past few years and we want to continue on that pathway. This is not an endpoint for us.” Van Doren also inadvertently revealed why Belgium are confident in their new mission. “It’s very proud to be considered one of the best players in the world,” he said. “I think there are a lot of athletes that I respect a lot and rate really highly. (...) and most of those players are here (with me in the national team).”
There are big off-the-field plans as well to make the development over the last decade not just sustainable but holistic. The RBHA have targeted increasing their membership to 50,000 people by the end of 2018 or within the first few months of 2019, a whopping increase of over 300% since their project ‘podium’ began in 2006. “...we have gone from 16000 to 46000 members,” Coudron said in the same interview. “And in my opinion, we will reach 50,000 members within the first few months of 2019.”
Those numbers may seem frivolous at present but its significance comes to light after Van Doren explains the kind of changes the country has seen at the grassroots level since the time he became an international. “The federation have pumped in lots of money to the youth teams,” he pointed out.
“They have tried really hard to make Belgium hockey grow. The number of youth prospects who have come into the first time means they can be really proud of what they have achieved. We are trying to make the sport grow not only inside the country but internationally.” Play the last match of the tournament and that shouldn’t be a problem.