The word Olympics brings bitter-sweet memories to former goalkeeper of the Indian hockey team Aloysius Edwards. He had gone all the way to Australia along with the other team members and participated in a month-long training camp at Brisbane in 2000. He was all set for the Sydney Olympics. However, one ill-fated morning, days ahead of the inauguration, he was asked to pack his bags. He was replaced with a rookie Devesh Singh Chauhan who had played just one international tournament prior to the Olympics. It was the most humiliating treatment ever meted out to a player.
“I still have the blazer which I could not wear. It pained me a lot. It would not have been so painful if they had dropped me from the team in India itself. Being sent away from the Games Village is humiliating. The hockey federation played dirty politics. I was made the scapegoat,’’ recalls the 44-year-old, who is now the branch manager of the Punjab & Sind Bank at Ameerpet.
Four years earlier, he had taken part in the Atlanta Olympics. The memories of the 1996 Atlanta adventure are still fresh in his mind and offer him consolation whenever the thought of the Sydney Olympics crops up. The Indian hockey team had two goalkeepers in Atlanta. Edwards and AB Subbaiah. Like Mukesh Kumar, his team-mate, Edwards rues the missed chances at Atlanta.
“We were favourites at Atlanta. We had a very strong team. We got solid support, particularly from the Punjab crowd settled in USA. It was just bad luck we couldn’t win a medal. Pargat was our captain. Luck plays a huge factor. We had a very good coach in Cedric D’Souza and got a good set of penalty corner experts who had good variations. But then, we fumbled,’’ he regrets.
The goalkeeper recalls that their match against Pakistan was the turning point. “We were let down by bad umpiring. We had a sure goal disallowed and were denied a legitimate penalty stroke when the ball touched a Pakistan player’s leg. We lost 1-2. That shattered us. We lost a few more matches. But surely, it was one of the best teams,’’ he says.
Talking about Indo-Pak matches in Olympics, he points out that they are motivating. “The excitement reaches a crescendo. It is fast and exciting. There is a lot of drama involved and moreover, people love to watch a hockey match between India and Pakistan because there is stick work. With the other countries, it is just a matter of hit and run. In Indo-Pak matches, you can see quality,’’ he explains.
Edwards, a product of the Sports Hostel and Coronation Club, started his career as a footballer and as a forward at the left wing. But when denied a place in the sub-junior team, he attended hockey selections. There too, he started off as a forward but in a sudden change of mood, he wore his friend’s pads and stood under the bar. He hasn’t looked back since.
He believes goalkeeping is all about guts and daredevilry. “The whole game revolves around a goalkeeper. More so now, because there is no off side as a player standing near you. The goalkeeper gets confused. They should be very agile,’’ he says. He sure was very agile.