FRENCH HOCKEY KEEPS THE FIRE BURNING

By ERROL D’CRUZ

Was France beating India 5-4 at the Junior World Cup on Wednesday a monumental surprise? Maybe not monumental. After all, France were runners-up at the 2013 Junior World Cup when India did not even make the quarterfinals.

And at the senior level, France registered a win over India at a World Cup too – Lahore 1990.

India coach Graham Reid said post-match on Wednesday that France “had the look of winning in their eyes”. That wouldn’t happen had the French not believed they could. Maybe it’s all beginning to come together. Everything that French hockey thinks and does is about the Olympics they host in 2024 in Paris.

Qualification for the 2018 World Cup in Bhubaneswar was timely and it was there that ‘Les Bleus’ served notice of their intentions with spirited performances.

They drew with Spain 1-1 and then beat Olympic champions Argentina 5-3 to qualify for the quarterfinals where they lost to powerhouses Australia to finish eighth – a creditable finish, though not their best of seventh achieved twice before at the World Cup.

It was also an amazing come-together of factors that have kept the pot boiling nicely for Paris 2024 where French hockey wants to make a huge statement to their sporting public obsessed with football. In the 2013 New Delhi Junior World Cup, France shocked the world by entering the final where they lost to Germany. Many of those players have formed the nucleus of the current squad.

Pieter van Staaten and Gaspard Baumgarten are two of a clutch of players that have been part of a remarkable French journey through the ranks, notably qualifying for the 2018 World Cup through the FIH World Series tournament in Johannesburg.

It meant featuring in the World Cup after 28 years and represented a significant achievement by a group of talented players.

At Amstelveen in the 2021 EuroHockey Championship France all but beat Germany when they led 5-2 after 22 minutes only to go down 5-6 with the match-winner coming four seconds from the end. They missed the semi-finals but scored a rousing 6-5 (a reversed scoreline) over Russia in Group C, the plate group at the event.

Then came the epic fightback against Spain when France rallied from 0-2 to win 3-2 and qualify for a Euro qualifier in Cardiff, Wales, to produce two more teams for the 2021 World Cup in Bhubaneswar-Rourkela in India.

France finished second to Wales, losing the final 1-2, but still booked their tickets to Bhubaneswar-Rourkela, joining hosts India and the first five teams at the European championship in Amstelveen – the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, England and Spain.

The achievement in Amstelveen and Cardiff sustains a concerted effort both on and off the pitch, enabling French hockey to take a giant leap by the time the Olympics come around less than three years from now. 

Encapsulated in Ambition 2024, shared by all stakeholders of French hockey, is the aim is to get more people playing, organize high level national and international competitions, make the general public aware of the values and numerous assets of hockey, through wide-reaching media coverage, develop the necessary funding and working towards a major objective: the performance and success of the French national teams.

A high performing French team, Ambition 2024 reckons, will result in bigger interest from partners and the media, and as a spin-off, more encouragement to play the game. In precise terms, French hockey achieved a top 10 finish at the 2018 World Cup, and although they did not qualify for the Tokyo Olympics, they are aiming for fifth place at the 2024 Paris Olympics. 

More profoundly France wants to sustain growth in the numbers of those involved in the sport in the country. A rise in the number of players from 50,000 in 2018 to 60,000 currently, almost half female, is projected to grow to 75,000 in 2022 before a hopeful 100,000 by the time the 2024 Olympics arrive.