‘Magical’ that we are out and about to play hockey: Graham Reid
CHENNAI: When the men's senior hockey team walks out to face Germany at Krefeld (a small city
near Dusseldorf) on Sunday, it will end one of the longest inactive streaks the men's team will have faced: 372 days without playing a competitive fixture. Since playing that heart-stopping, nail-eating 2-2 (3-1 win via a shootout) against Australia on February 22 at Bhubaneswar, they, like most of the
world, were condemned to live life in lockdown. Even as other professional sporting activities began, the men's hockey team was left to train on their own at the SAI campus in Bengaluru for the majority of the last year.
Now that they are finally out and ready to play again, their coach, Graham Reid, calls it 'magical'. In an interview, the Australian reflects on the year gone by, what they did in situ, the objectives of the Germany trip and preparation for the Olympics. Excerpts:
What's it like being able to get out of Bengaluru and play again? Relief more than anything? Does the team have a spring in their step?
It's exactly right. The fact of being outside of where we have been in camp for a very long time to come out to a different country and to a different sort of situation is magical. It does bring a spring in everyone's step like you said. I think that freshness is something that was well needed. The feedback that we will get from playing these matches will be invaluable.
The team hasn't played in over a year so you can't read too much into what shape they are in. So what are you looking for from this tour? Just getting some match practice or something more tangible?
It's very difficult as you can imagine. We have been in Bengaluru training and having internal matches. Of course, what you lack when that's all you have had is competition feedback which is a valuable improvement loop that perhaps you don't get when you are just playing internal matches. It's really important, these matches. Our guys are excited about trying to apply some of the things that we have been working tactically and so on.
How important is managing a players' workload in this case?
You can't possibly make them play high-intensity games all of a sudden. One of the things we have been trying to do (during our internal matches) is to get the players match that match intensity they hit during competitive games. We used technology to do that. Of course, it's very difficult, you can try all you like to provide that match intensity but it isn't until real competition where you can get that. But we have been quite happy with our match intensity that we have been showing in the last couple of months but yeah, it will be a real test for us. Yes, players' workload is something that we are very aware of and you only got to look around at the different sports that have come back from being in lockdown or quarantine.
Was there a specific reason behind going to Germany?
The reason for Germany is really chance. I have been contacting lots of coaches for the last three or four months for competition. I spoke to Kais (Germany coach Kais al Saadi). He was also looking for competition, everyone really is starved of competition and then it a case of could we make it work. Can
everything happen to make it work? In this case, it worked out.
As a coach, how do you plan between now and the Olympics considering there is still so much uncertainty?
So much uncertainty around in the world, it changes on a daily basis. We spent so much time on actually speaking to the guys about it. (Author Stephen) Covey speaks about the three spheres of control, influence and concern. The focus is on trying to control the controllables. A lot of things that are going on in the world we can't control at the moment. If we come to terms with that, then you
just try and focus on what we can control. They are the things that we have within our grasp. We have been doing a lot of work with that and I think it keeps people focused and that's really what we want. So between now and the Olympics, we still don't know how much competition we will get. Whatever we can, we will try and make up for the lost time. Competition gives you that accelerated learning process and that's what we are chasing.
Matches: Feb 28 vs Germany, March 2 vs Germany, March 6 vs Great Britain, March 8 vs
Great Britain