The Tribune: Groupism in hockey team

Tribune Editorials
Posted at: Sep 28 2015

Strong punishment is the key

A news report on Saturday revealed that Michael Nobbs, who coached the Indian hockey team at the 2012 London Olympic Games, had complained that groupism in the team had caused India to finish last in the tournament. While the news of groupism and indiscipline in itself is not breaking news, a few damning details have emerged. Nobbs had said that some team members were keen to merely participate in the Olympics, and willing to go any length to achieve this goal. This included asking a fellow player to “get injured” so that a standby player could get a chance to play. These are very serious allegations; in fact, on the basis of Nobbs’ report, Hockey Indian had suspended one key player for over a year, and dropped another.

Groupism has existed in the Indian hockey teams for a long time, but when a team is winning or doing well, these things don’t seem to matter. The hockey team has been struggling badly for around 40 years — during this time, whispers and reports of cliques in the team have emerged regularly. There are complaints of regionalism; whenever a significant number of players in the team is from a particular state or region, these fears and whispers intensify. To top it all, the Indian hockey association has been in a state of mismanagement for a long time, sometimes involved in corruption, often governed by dictatorial and unprincipled officials. It shouldn’t surprise anyone if the players too get affected by these attitudes.

In any Indian national team, made up of players from diverse social and linguistic backgrounds, it’s not possible to stop the players from forming groups. It can become harmful if these groups start working against the interests of the team. This seems to have happened often in the last decade. The results on the field have been quite distressing -— if India finished last at the 2012 Olympics, they failed to even qualify for the 2008 Olympics. To stamp out the problem of harmful groupism, a very strong disciplinary action needs to be taken.