Players want Roelant Oltmans as coach if Paul van Ass is gone

BENGALURU: With 382 days to go for the 2016 Rio Olympics, the Indian men’s hockey campers began training at the SAI high altitude training centre in Shilaroo, Himachal Pradesh, on Monday without their chief coach Paul van Ass.

READ ALSO: Indian hockey – beaten again by bruised administrative egos

With the Dutchman, who is in Rotterdam, contending that Hockey India has sacked him, the players realized they would have to endure the uncertainty until the next coach arrives. However, they had a solution to the current crisis: appoint high performance director Roelant Oltmans as the coach until the Olympics.

READ ALSO: Hockey India has fired me, says Paul van Ass

“We are used to having Oltmans around for the past couple of years. He is respected by the players and shares a good rapport. Ideally he should be our coach now until the Olympics. Otherwise it is going to be tough for us to get used to another new coach,” a player said.

At the same time, the campers, raring to go after a sedate outing at the Hockey World League semifinals in Belgium, were left searching for answers to their question, “Humari galati kya hai?” Since the 2010 Commonwealth Games, the national senior squad has played under four foreign coaches – a Spaniard, two Australians and a Dutch. Each time they adapt to a certain style of hockey, another coach is ready to experiment with a variant.

“It is a disturbing trend. With less than a year to go, we are still wondering who is going to coach us at the Olympics. It is going to be difficult to adapt to another coach. We were getting along fine with Paul and now we hear he is not coming back,” expressed a senior member of the side.

Another senior, who did not want to be named, said the junior players would be adversely affected. “Most of the seniors have been moulded into playing in a certain style and we don’t make many changes to our game when a new coach comes in. But the juniors learn new skills especially from foreign coaches. This kind of change in coaches leaves them confused and is not good for the future of the game in our country.”

Times View

As the players are very correctly pointing out, frequent changes of the coach are the worst possible thing when a team is in the process of rebuilding. Indian hockey is far below the lofty standards it once enjoyed. If it is to reclaim those dizzy heights or even come close to doing so, all those involved in running the sport need to pull together. Allowing petty egos to interfere in the process is just not on. At this rate, it will soon become impossible to get any self-respecting coach (and the best ones will have a high degree of self-respect) to take on the assignment.