News for 12 April 2020
All the news for Sunday 12 April 2020
#StayHomeStayStrong: First batch of new hockey programmes hit FIH.live
As part of our #StayHomeStayStrong campaign and following the removal of geo-blocking restrictions on our FIH.live OTT broadcasting platform, we are pleased to announce that four brand-new programmes are now available for the global hockey family to enjoy.
FIH Hockey Pro League 2020 - The Season So Far (26 mins)
The season may currently be on hold, but there was plenty of wonderful action in the early stages of this year’s competition to keep you thoroughly entertained. To watch the programme, click here.
FIH Hockey Pro League 2019 - How They Won It (26 mins)
If you have been searching for a reminder about how Australia men and the Netherlands women took the inaugural FIH Hockey Pro League titles, then look no further. To watch the programme, click here.
Review: Odisha Hockey Men’s World Cup Bhubaneswar 2018 (52 mins)
A chance to look back on the highs and lows of the sensational, 19-day competition played at Bhubaneswar’s Kalinga Stadium, where Belgium’s Red Lions battled their way to a first ever World Cup title. To watch the programme, click here.
Review: Vitality Hockey Women’s World Cup London 2018 (52 mins)
Re-live the best of the action at the ground-breaking event hosted by the Lee Valley Hockey & Tennis Centre in London’s Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, where the dazzling Dutch stormed to glory and Ireland’s Green Army wrote their own dramatic fairy-tale by winning the silver medal. To watch the programme, click here.
More special features – including a look back at some of the finest matches of the 2019 FIH Hockey Pro League – are in the works and will be made available in the coming weeks.
The removal of geo-blocking* from FIH.live allows hockey fans all over the world access not only to the features mentioned above, but also to a treasure trove of wonderful hockey action from the past few years. As well as every single match played in the 2019 and 2020 editions of the FIH Hockey Pro League being available in their entirety, you can also find full match replays from the women’s and men’s 2018 FIH World Cups as well as the FIH Hockey Olympic qualifiers.
* In the United States, the content is available for free via B/R Live: www.live.bleacherreport.com.
#StayHomeStayStrong
#HockeyInvites
FIH site
Belgium v Germany, EuroHockey 2019: The greatest hockey match?
Rod Gilmour witnessed a classic EuroHockey Championships last summer while semi-final will be remembered for a generation
PIC: WORLDSPORTPICS
Oh to be young members of HC Olympia, the burgeoning hockey club which usually has the pitch at Wilrijkse Plein Sports Centre, home to the 2019 EuroHockey Championships, all to itself.
There are 450 members at the club and rising. It’s the only hockey club in central Antwerp and its genesis arrived in 2016 when Hockey Belgium was awarded last summer’s brilliant Championships.
After this riveting tournament, how many more storylines will there be for a nation fast turning into a hockey superpower? And will there be an Olympia member lining up as a Red Lion or Panther in a decade, we wonder?
For the lucky kids were surely telling their own favourite moments of the Euros with their sticks on the same pitch; when they relived the defensive artistry of Arthur van Doren, the corner power of Alexander Hendrickx or chest-thumping emotion of Victor Wegnez when the stands were unbolted and club matches resumed at the beginning of the season. For the rest of us, the memories of this match are firmly etched.
This was the championships where Belgium men further placed themselves into the pantheon of sporting greats. For those inside the stadium when Belgium beat Germany in the semi-finals, the last throes of this classic match will be retold for a generation.
PIC: WORLDSPORTPICS
The Hockey Paper spoke to coaches, commentators, journalists and players and they were united in their assessment; that the semi-final was the best match they had possibly ever watched.
Belgium’s world and European titles had been four years in the making. In 2015, Kiwi coach Shane McLeod set about changing man-to-man tactics, enforcing a zonal press which encouraged the opposition to keep retention in midfield pockets, while the Lions pressed to dispossess.
It helped that team-mates knew each other’s role implicitly, a majority having played with each other through the junior ranks. Belgium ruled the roost in Bhubaneswar and on home soil cast aside teams with unerring belief.
At 2-0 down in the Euros semi-final, little needed to be said by McLeod, but for making sure that 50-50 battles were won in midfield. The rest would take care of itself. Belgium scored four goals in the last 18 minutes, three in the last six during a period of play in which few will forget. Nor the final score: 4-2 for the record.
Belgium beat Germany 4-2 in a classic ALL PICS: WORLDSPORTPICS
But it was so much more than the searing comeback. The crowd that night was in hockey ecstasy. The players responded and carved through Germany, by now becoming increasingly fatigued thanks to their early man-to-man marking.
The lone drummer and the voices of the Red Tribe support added dimension, while pockets of football-style chanting paved the way for one of the most extraordinary hockey atmospheres possible. To think that Germany were a glancing glove away from likely going 3-0 up until Vincent Vanasch, the world’s best goalkeeper, turned into Europe’s best illegal trap spotter and a video referral saved Belgium from a penalty stroke.
The crowd jeered Germany and then roared Belgium on. Tom Boon and Nicolas De Kerpel pulled goals back before Wegnez seized the moment with a wonderful backhand strike which rocketed through a crowded defence to the back post netting. 3-2. No turning back for Belgium.
The final against Spain was a formality. Belgium harassed the streetwise Spanish and their counter-attacking play paved the way for a goal blitz before half-time. From midfield to baseline, Belgium were incisive, mesmeric and dominant in the simplicity of their play. They had started the tournament with a 5-0 win over Spain and finished it with the same score, in the same manner.
Played out hours before a day which heralded one of the great sporting moments when English cricketer Ben Stokes blazed to all parts, as Headingley ‘81 turned into Headingley 2019. so Belgium men put themselves into their own category. No doubt there will be some Antwerp locals who couldn’t get one of the 7,000 tickets for the semi-final epic.
In time, tall tales may well be told from those who weren’t there who will regale as if they were. Such was the euphoria in the fans’ village afterwards, when the players left the stage crowd surfing across their adoring fans one by one. That was Antwerp 2019.
The EHF is replaying the whole tournament here
This originally featured in a previous Hockey Paper edition. Don’t miss out. Subscribe in print or in digital format.
The Hockey Paper
Top coaches hit out at hockey's disjointed conclusion to 19/20 season
John Flack
Stephen Watt
As expected, there has been a mixed reaction to Hockey Ireland's strategies to determine various issues after the season was deemed to be concluded due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The governing body have declared the top-flight EY Irish Hockey Leagues null and void while using a different approach for the domestic leagues across the island.
Promotion and relegation in Ulster and the other provinces will be decided by 'percentage equalisation' using the amount of points secured to games played.
Banbridge coach Gordon Cracknell was left frustrated, while his Annadale counterpart Richard Fairman admitted his team had made a "great escape" after being virtually certain to be relegated.
Cracknell said: "It's very disappointing given that we had only four games left to play and it seems Hockey Ireland have taken the easiest way out.
"One has to ask why the percentage equalisation approach was good enough for the regional leagues and not for the IHL."
Stephen Watt, coach of current Ulster Premiership champions Instonians, also feels that there is an anomaly in the different approaches to settling the various issues after his team were in title contention behind Cookstown, who look set to be crowned champions.
The Hockey Ireland statement said that the national leagues had been voided "as there are too many games left to play to determine a fair final ranking by mathematical or other method".
Watt said: "There were more matches to be played in the respective Ulster (men's and women's) Premierships than in either of the IHLs.
"Why then is it judged unfair to determine projected finishing positions in the IHL though fair to do likewise in the Ulster Premierships? The bottom IHL club, Annadale, have secured one point from a possible 36 and the club one place higher than them have accumulated 12 points from 36.
"It is judged unfair on Annadale to conclude they will be relegated yet it is deemed appropriate to decide mathematically who will win either Ulster Premiership when many sides could still have achieved that?
"If the season is null and void for the league with the least amount of fixtures to be played, why is it not appropriate, sensible, logical and understandable that that decision would apply to all leagues?"
Belfast Telegraph
Oltmans uses remote training technique on players
By Jugjet Singh
File Photo: The Dutchman, who is now in the Netherlands, makes sure he is inside the homes of his 28 trainees every day. - NSTP/ASWADI ALIAS.
THE Netherlands is about 10,000 kilometres from Malaysia, but it has not stopped national coach Roelant Oltmans from monitoring his players.
The Dutchman, who is now in the Netherlands, makes sure he is inside the homes of his 28 trainees every day.
“We used to train eight to 10 sessions a week before the Movement Control Order (MCO) was enforced. Currently, the sessions have been reduced to five times a week.
"The training programme, created by our trainer Carl James, is focused on maintaining the fitness of our players. The players train at home based on this programme,” he said.
Oltmans has been handed a target to guide the national team to the final of the Sultan Azlan Shah Cup in Ipoh, which has been postponed due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
The Azlan Shah Cup was initially slated for April 11-18 before it was postponed to Sept 12-19.
“We (together with my assistant coaches) are also looking into maintaining the structure by giving online assignments which can be done at home. Since the players can't train together and even individually outside their homes, they follow a regime, prepared by us.
“As soon as the MCO is lifted, we will come up with a new programme for the players.
“But at this moment, the welfare of the nation is far more important, so keep your distance, stay fit and stay safe,” said Oltmans.
New Straits Times
Karachi Sports Forum reaches out to over 50 hockey players, ground staff in welfare drive
KARACHI: In its effort to reach out to needy persons of sports community in Karachi, the Karachi Sports Forum (KSF) has distributed ration bags, sanitizers and face masks among more than 50 ground staff and hockey players who had been trained at the Olympian Islahuddin-Dr Shah Hockey Academy.
As the country struggles to cope up with the humongous task of the coronavirus pandemic and the subsequent economic instability of the country and its people, the KSF has taken the initiative to reach out to needy players, coaches, umpires and ground staff in the city.
On the occasion, former hockey captain and Olympian Islahuddin, Olympian Ayaz Mehmood, Olympian Sameer Hussain, Olympian Kashif Jawwad, international hockey player Mohammad Asif, KSF Chairman Asif Azeem, KSF Chief Organizer Syed Waseem Hashmi, Sindh Olympic Association Vice President Tehmina Asif, SOA Media Coordinator Mohammad Nasir and others were present.
Olympian Islahuddin further donated Rs 230,000 to the KSF kitty to help needy people who earn their bread and butter through sports since all the sports activities have come to a complete standstill due to the pandemic.
Islahuddin, on the occasion, praised KSF for its efforts to reach out to needy sports persons at their houses in a respectful manner where the identity of those persons have not been disclosed for the sake of their dignity.
Olympians Ayaz Mehmood and Sameer Hussain also praised KSF for being the first team to reach out to needy persons related to sports. KSF Chairman Asif Azeem revealed that JS Bank has approached the forum to auction the historic memorabilia of Pakistan’s sports legends to raise funds for the deserving people.
Asif said that KSF looks to extend its operations to Ramazan with the help of affluent people where the ration bags as well as Ed gifts will distributed among the deserving sports persons who are struggling to survive these very tough times.
Chief Organizer Waseem Hashmi also praised renowned sportspersons for coming forward to help needy persons from the sports community.
Dawn
Dhanraj Pillay: Every Indian should come forward to help in this time of crisis
The former India captain is lending a hand to the country’s efforts in combating COVID-19 by staying at home and contributing money for the cause.
Nandakumar Marar
Many types of exercises, including stick-work and ball-juggling, can be done within the confines of one’s home during lockdown, says Dhanraj Pillay. - PTI (FILE)
Dhanraj Pillay is lending a hand to India’s efforts in combating COVID-19 by staying at home and contributing money for the cause.
“India has given me so much due to hockey, every Indian should come forward to help in whatever way, those who are in a position to help. Each contribution, big or small does matter,” the Pune-born former India hockey captain said.
Dhanraj is in his Mumbai home, away from his mother due to the lockdown. He is happy to see others who managed to join their families before the restrictions came into force.
He has chipped in with ₹3 lakh for the Chief Minister’s relief fund, and ₹5 lakh for the PM-CARES fund.
Unique situation
“I have never seen my nation in a lockdown, during 34 years stay in Mumbai. We don’t know what is going to happen in the future, so supporting the efforts by the State and central level is in our hands. Every individual should come forward, [and I’m] happy to see athletes in other sports contribute. When we come out of this, I am ready to help colleagues at Air India working with me, who may, due to financial reasons, find it difficult to arrange monthly provisions for families.”
Dhanraj is secretary, AI Sports Control Board (Western Region).
Referring to flights undertaken by the national airline to bring back citizens stuck in different countries, he said: “Air India always [came] forward in emergencies, from the time the first flight brought back Indians from Wuhan. Evacuation flights are on.”
Asked about adapting to restrictions on citizens, including India internationals actively competing, he pointed out: “Those preparing for the Olympic Games are stranded in Bengaluru when lockdown started. The India men’s and women’s hockey teams were being guided by their coaches, as per information told to me.”
Exercises
The former AI hockey coach, known for athleticism and sharp skills in playing days, added: “For other sportspersons at home, doing the core exercises and developing muscles is useful. Skipping is one of the best workouts to maintain conditioning. For those staying in a house with its own terrace, there are lots of exercises which can done. Stick-work and ball-juggling can be done, new moves like a body-dodge can be picked now, to be implemented later when players are allowed to train outside.”
For the active sportspersons and coaches, the lockdown offered a positive side, too, pointed out Dhanraj. “When we are competing or training, we miss families due to tournaments and camps. This is the time for us to spend time with them. I feel happy looking at the many personal videos around, put out by sportspersons. Staying indoors is beneficial for all of us health-wise, so when the Health Minister, the CM or the PM tells us to follow orders, we can contribute by listening,” he signed off.
Sportstar