Year of the Rooster -- 2005. According to the Chinese calendar. Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins hits theaters to widespread acclaim. Liverpool complete Miracle of Istanbul.
Also in 2005 – the Belgium Hockey Federation tear their existing rule book and script a new hockey bible applicable for the country. To be followed verbatim by anybody associated with the sport, it has only one goal. One vision. Win a medal at the 2016 Olympics.
Bert Wentink likes to narrate a story that underlines Belgium's rapid rise in the world of field hockey. “Most of the senior and junior players in Belgium's national team woke up to only view in 2005. A poster of Dutch legend Teun De Nooijer on their bedroom walls. Two weeks later they would all be playing him. But the scene is vastly different these days.”
Wentink, the current technical director of the hockey federation in Belgium, has told this story before. But that doesn’t make it any less real. Or any more apocryphal. “The Red Lions played in an Under-16 European competition in 2005. Six from that side (John-John Dohmen, Thomas Briels, Felix Denayer, Simon Gougnard, Jerome Truyens, Cedric Charlier) have played for the national team here (in Raipur),” he tells Sunday Standard.
Why 2005? That was the year when they decided to usher in a new era for the sport. “We started a youth project in 2005 and we were very strict in this programme. We believed in the decisions we took and also in the moments we had setbacks we kept working hard, convincing the stakeholders to follow us,” Wentink explains.
The project would go on for a decade. The first phase, BeGold, was thrust into service. There was to be emphasis on youth and youth would be promoted. But even the most precocious of talents needed a friendly environment. There was no point in selecting the best young players but putting them under people who did not know much about the sport. This is what Wentink told himself when the Belgian Federation and the Dutchman worked out a plan. To hire only foreign nationals as chief coaches.
“At that moment, you have the development of the squad and the level you want the squad to reach… that goes faster than the development of the coaches,” he points out in a five minute monologue as to why the federation decided to look only overseas. “That’s always coming a little bit behind. We also introduced a coach development programme (to develop indigenous coaches) but that always takes a little bit longer. Because being a coach means you need experience and experience takes time. For example: I am Dutch and I did my highest level over there in 1972 so there is a big difference. That’s the reason why we had to find coaches from abroad.”
Structure key
But it isn’t as simple as it sounds. Wentink poured over the applicants and only brought on board (the country has since appointed five senior coaches, all foreign) coaches who would accept the main job description. “It was my task to ensure they wouldn’t just do their own thing but develop a structure that would work in Belgium. It’s impossible to say, ‘okay, I will take an Australian approach to India or a German approach to Belgium.’ That will not work. You will have to develop a vision that fits your country.”
The tenet of that vision was to get Belgium into Beijing. One of Wentink’s selling points of the first phase of the project was a promise to get into the Olympics. “When I started, I presented to kids and parents the possibility of going to the Olympic games. Now I can say that we were in Beijing and we were in London. That is really important. The success and the attention of the media and sponsors comes after the success. Never the other way round.”
Australian Adam Commens took over from South Africa’s Giles Bonnet in 2007 and he brought instant success. A bronze at the EuroHockey Nations Championships in Manchester paved the way for automatic qualification to Beijing. After that, some funding found its way to hockey in Belgium. And the country’s Olympic Committee, who initially persuaded Wentink to come up with a new plan to change hockey in 2005, started helping them even more.
The project was working – the hockey team had made it into the Summer Games after a break of 48 years. But they had outgrown BeGold. And the awareness was there, even among the youth. As Tanguy Cosyns, who was 17 in 2008, recollects. “I think we took a lot of foreign coaches. Our first was a South African coach. After that we appointed an Australian, who started a new vision of hockey in Belgium. It worked because we started to beat very good teams.” A ninth place was achieved but it seemed too low for the investment already done.
It was time for Keep The Flame Burning. “It was important for us to not take a rest after qualifying for Beijing,” Wentink says. “We knew we had to keep working harder, keep pushing to be there in London. That was the bare essential that was required from the second phase.”
But you could tell that the goalposts had been moved. In came Australian Colin Batch as coach in 2011. And he helped them to a gold in the Champions Challenge in South Africa (Belgium beat India 4-3 in the final). And a year later, at the 2012 Olympics, they knew Keep The Flame Burning was achieved. The Red Lions finished fifth, their best for 62 years at the Olympics.
The third phase – aptly titled Push For the Podium – was commissioned immediately. Marc Lammers helped the side to a silver in the 2013 Euro Hockey Nations Championships. The improvement, now very tangible, helped the players push for a competitive league structure. Domestic clubs couldn’t ignore the players. Foreign imports became common and Belgian presence in continental club meets became common. Hockey also became a very popular sport.
“When we started there were 15,000 members. Now you can multiply by three. So that’s a result of the men’s and the women’s team,” Wentink explains.
World Cup Best
The 2014 World Cup saw them finish fifth, their best ever at the quadrennial event. To further embellish their credentials they got a silver at the World Hockey Final in Raipur last week but, as Wentink explains, an Olympic medal is the only objective.
Their current coach, Kiwi Shane McLeod, who was hired just a month or so ago, feels they are in with a chance of closing the project at Rio. “It’s really hard to tell. There are five-six teams there. Obviously the favourites will be the Netherlands, Australia and Germany. Then there is a second rung and I see us being one of those teams. If we play well at the right time then we will be in with a chance. But we are not there yet and we have another eight months of development work to go.”
There is another aspect to the side that has flown under the radar. It is not only a young side, but also a side filled with students. And it’s only natural that those talents may not always subscribe to the manual laid out in front of them. But not this batch. They live by it. “It’s easy because they are all passionate. When you say you have to train more they always say 'okay'. They are happy to be on the field,” Dohmen, the current skipper of the national side, says.
Cosyns has another theory on why most of them are students. “That’s the Europe culture,” he says. “In Europe if you don’t study you have a lot of problems because a lot of companies want to work with you but if you don’t have a degree it’s impossible to live there,” he smiles. Nobody knows what will happen in Rio but one thing has already changed according to Wentink. Aspiring hockey players in Brussels, Ghent and Antwerp have done away with decorating their bedroom walls with players from Netherlands.
"Tom Boon is on their bedroom walls now."