New Indian Express: Neil Hawgood: An Indian hockey coach with an Australian heart

By Swaroop Swaminathan

Neil Hawgood wasn’t sure whether the Indian women’s hockey team knew what would hit them at the Olympics. He knew the kind of lives the girls had lived before leaving their homes to move into hockey camps, but he wanted to gauge whether the girls realised the enormity of the Summer Games.

So he called all the probables — this random fishing expedition happened before the final team was announced in the first week of July — one by one and asked them a question. “Have you ever heard of Roger Federer?” All of them, unsurprisingly, said the same four-letter word. Unfortunately, it was the four-letter word that Hawgood wasn’t expecting. “Nahi.”

It’s important to stress that there is no correlation between knowing Federer and their abilities on the field, but it reveals a lot about their background and the lack of exposure at the international level. It’s one of the main reasons why the 54-year-old gives a curious answer on whether the team would be overawed by the occasion. “I think once they get there, the fear may start,” Hawgood says. “Maybe when they are marching inside the Maracana and there are 100,000 people looking at them. Or it (the stage) may never affect them. But it will be a fantastic learning experience for the next one. Which is why it’s very important for these girls to have the next one in four years’ time.”

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The current group of players have done exceedingly well in the recent past but Hawgood lifts the lid on what went on behind the scenes as he started to mould a team capable of competing at the international level. “When I first came in, some of the girls just wouldn’t look me in the eye,” he says. “I think I have grown to understand where people stand within a caste and for whatever reason they would look at this (points to the colour of the skin) before saying ‘oh, you must be way at the top’. But I am sitting and thinking, ‘actually no, in Australia, I am pretty much seen as someone in the middle to lower rung.”

A monologue that would have put a Quentin Tarantino character to shame, it was fascinating to hear him talk about how the inner psyche of the squad changed in the last four years. “Take Deep Grace Ekka for example. She just wouldn’t look at you. She would just urm and erm. Now, I can actually have a conversation with her. That’s been a massive change. Their personalities were probably locked in and there are many reasons for that to happen. Over the last three to four years, we have told the girls, ‘I don’t care where you girls come from but you have to tell this person sitting beside you what they did was wrong in a game if they did something wrong.’ You just cannot say ‘but I can’t as she is senior to me.”

“I am pretty sure they are no longer humble, although once they get back home they will go back to their old selves.”

Forget the case of Deep, who had trouble looking at Hawgood when he was addressing the team. Namita Toppo, another first team member, couldn’t even talk to him.

“For me (to get used to the new job) was challenging but it was never really hard. I had to say to Namita, ‘if you can’t talk, I don’t need you.’ That wasn’t a threat or anything. It was more like if you can’t talk to me, you are not going to develop. If you can’t talk off the field, you are not going to talk onthe field.”

To many, the women’s hockey team have already done a creditable job — they have broken through a glass ceiling. But Hawgood, under whose leadership India won World League Round 2 in March 2015, feels the team can progress even further.

“Have they reached their potential?

No. Can they reach their potential? Not sure, because they did miss out on the learning years. When someone comes in as an 18-year-old, most people think they are young enough. But I am not sure what these girls knew at 13 and whether it’s the same thing, a Dutch girl or an Argentinian girl knew at 13.”

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The question of framing a debate pertaining to availability of resources around population is a tedious one but the former Kookaburra, who finished fourth in the 1988 Seoul Games, makes a compelling case. “With a country of 1.4 billion people, you could potentially have 100 million girls playing hockey. But let’s be conservative. For example, if we can identify 10% of that number, we have 10 million girls playing hockey. That is still better than any other country in the world. Right now, I have gotten 300-500 under the system. So there is a long way to go to find the real talent in India.”

Speaking about India, Hawgood just cannot stop talking about the country. “I don’t think I have met a more humble race,” he says. That can easily be dismissed as an answer made for the press but Hawgood, who first took the post of coach in July 2012, means it. That doesn’t mean he is frustrated by the country’s uniqueness with respect to the lengthy procedures, the system has put in place.

“Everyone wants to do the right thing. It’s just there is a process to it. I lost my phone the other day and I had to apply for a new sim. It’s now been four days and we are still waiting for it. In Australia, it would be on within the hour. I find that unbelievable but that’s the actual process. I am used to it. Everything comes. It might happen in three minutes, three days… three weeks. But it will happen.”

“That’s the beauty and uniqueness of it all.”