Bad basic coaching an international malady

Press, 19 November 1982, Page 23

Bad basic

coaching an international malady

The Asian and European “styles” of hockey: catalysts for wide-ranging dissension within the sport. In the second of two special articles, CYRIL WALTER, a renowned New Zealand coach and theoretician, examines the fall of standards within two of the “Asian” countries, India and New Zealand, and the ramifications

internationally.

It is being said that in order to circumvent the close marking by the European “telephone numbers," we must adopt a European formation and that we must introduce greater speed into the running and passing facets of our game. This is certainly a European approach to the problem of improving our performances. It regards tactics as primary, but it does not ignore technique in its discarding of the' Asian approach. It seeks to revise technique, and thereby it attacks technique. Consider briefly the traditional Asian approach. The Asians are not, and were not, strangers to close marking. They have coped by decoying their markers, by running off. the ball and off the marker at the appropriate time, by superlative stickwork in restricted areas, and by close , The techniques beat the tactics. We first saw Indians in New Zealand in 1926. In the 56 years since then, New Zealand has produced many highly skilled players who based their play on the Asian example. Any coach who sought to raise their centres of gravity and to lower their stickwork standards would invite ridicule. He would also be guilty of 'a notable arrogance.

Is an alternative to skill being fostered because in general in New Zealand we do not fulfil basic coaching requirements? Our . two majoT failures .<are these:— • We do not analyse nor coach the numerous prin-

ciples necessary to the passing skills. Passing is the most difficult skill to coach and to learn. We solve the difficulty by ignoring it. • We do not coach close stickwork, so necessary for eluding opponents and for dribbling in congested areas.

The work that has been done in the foregoing basic and primary needs has been confined to the few and to isolated pockets of resistance to European backwardness. Our hockey will continue to be mediocre until the few become the many, and the few will continue to be few until the struggle against ignorance and bigotry is won.

The tendency towards revising technique begins with the assertion that our body mechanics are wrong. We must be more upright. But upright players are ten-a-penny in every country, and very limited in their abilities. Consider the half-backs in the Indian team of 1975 which played a memorable match with Canterbury at Porritt Park on a ground comparable with any astro turf surface. Their short passes, although well directed, were too slow. Repeatedly Canterbury players pounced upon them to launch counter-attacks. These half-backs were so upright that they were unable to inject any force into their push-shots. The main area of decline in both Indian and Pakistani hockey has been that of the

half-backs and full-backs. The 1975 Indian half-backs desperately needed coaching in body mechanics precisely because they were faithful exponents of what logically stems from the heavenly precepts which threaten us today.

The upright player always dribbles with the ball too close to his. feet. If he does not, he cannot reach the ball unless he ceases to be upright. And when he does, his stickwork is hindered because he.is tapping away at the top half of the ball with limited control and limited vision. His main asset is speed. Of .what avail is it against the tackler who is just as fast and who preserves a low centre of gravity which brings his stick nearer to the ball than the stick of the dribbler? As I know, well from my own experience as a centre-half the marking of an upright opponent is. a simple assignment.

The basic skills of hockey are defined under four headings. These are trapp’ng, passing, stickwork and dribbling, and tackling. All of them demand a low centre of

gravity. Passing involves hitting, pushing and flicking. Even the Europeans must come down to the ball to execute these skills. The upright player either tops the ball or chops it. Are we now to coach our young in serious faults? The better they become at the faults the .worse they are at hockey. What a future!

obeisance. The mystique is a myth, a con trick. Astro turf, like any good surface, is a boon to a highly skilled player, but highly skilled players are the exception, not the rule, in international hockey. The latter does not produce what many of the pundits and the press seek to tell us.

What we see are players who are organised into various formations, designed for close marking and a largely defensive and negative policy. We see players with speed but with restricted skills, and therefore doomed to spoiling play since they lack the ability to be consistently constructive. We see matches which are boring scrambles, which are riddled with errors, and which reduce the umpires to whistling soloists. Nothing much happens because the players are not good enough to make anything happen.

However, if profound analysis of techniques are eliminated, coaches will be easier to find and to produce. A concentration on tactics and formations is an aid to the manufacture of instant coaches, provided that they do not have to be concerned with the formations and tactics which are essential .to highly skilled players. What is being suggested at the national level in New Zealand is not new. It is a restatement of European principles and a continuation of the struggle between the two lines. New Zealand is to go European. Astro turf demands it. Astro turf, international hockey and international competition have in the past decade been accorded a mystique which seems to demand uncritical

In 1979 in Perth on astro turf in an international tournament, Great Britain played Australia. Seldom were more than two players involved in any exchange without a stoppage. The long, hard hits over the goal-lines

and the side-lines dominated the proceedings. The only speed and fitness in the match were provided by the ball boys, who I thought stole the show. Astro turf was wasted on these teams. They played cow paddock hockey. This hooha was labelled an international match! At the same tournament, Pakistan played and defeated New Zealand by 5-1. Both teams possessed some skilful players, Pakistan the greater number. There was far more stickwork, far more constructive play, much greater fluency, far fewer interruptions, much greater speed, higher workloads, and some respite for the ball boys. New Zealand lost with dignity because it exhibited some skill, and Pakistan restated many aspects of the Asian line on hockey.

They have resulted from some degree of insufficent technical skill, from an obsession with the need to reduce losing margins, from a lack of constructive ability in creating attacks, from deficiencies in tackling techniques, and from insufficient attention to the tactics of 5-3-2-1 hockey. Our attacks suffer from bad passing, both at inception and in development. Not only do we not coach intensively the skill and the judgment of all the related conditions attaching to passing, we also tolerate within New Zealand too much inaccurate passing. We applaud the opponent who intercepts, ignoring the fact that he should never have been given the chance to intercept. The skill of tackling needs far more attention than it receives, both because it is difficult to coach and to master. It is certainly a national weakness.

The 5-3-2-1 formation which has been traditional possesses an inbuilt defensive system which was a major factor in New Zealand’s success in 1976. It is as flexible as any of the telephone numbers, if not more so. It encourages initiative, it demands techniques and skill, and it promotes an attacking policy. It is now one of the targets of our fountain heads. That technique: is now threatened as another of the targets is even more serious. Soon we will be asking 100 metres sprinters to launch themselves into propulsion from a standing start — in the name of speed, perhaps.

Technical improvements in the foregoing areas will improve greatly our 5-3-2-1 deployment, and will improve our understanding of its potentialities. No formation, be it 3-3-3-1-1 or 10-9-8-7-6 or whatever, will help any player to be better at delivering constructive passes or to improve his tackling. Moreover, any form of interference with correct body mechanics, whether in the name of speed or of ‘‘international’ competition” or of astro turf, will certainly make him worse.

Jeff Archibald of Auckland, currently the most constructive passer in New Zealand, has been dropped from the New Zealand team for the astro turf run around in Melbourne. This is certainly a valid mystique. We cannot see the 5-3-2-1 wood for those trees which are so wayward in their passing and tackling and stickwork. We do not understand the theory of 5-3-2-1 because we have not made technical skill the primary factor. Players of little skill are entitled to play and to express their views. Pundits who are impatient with the skill thing and who worship speed are also entitled to their views and to express them. However, they invite and deserve strong opposition when they seek to impose their technical deficiencies and their out-dated ideas on those who possess skill, who seek to improve and who coach and advocate skill.

New Zealand’s losses in international matches have not been caused by any infatuation with technical skill.

All the ballyhoo and the claptrap about international hockey, international competition and astro turf will continue to be exposed and to be meaningless until such time as international competition produces a reasonable number of teams which compare favourably with the great Asian teams of the past — not in which we live, but from which some, of us have learned so much.

What sort of coaches are the coaches who are advocating these nonsenses? Already

By then of course, the big talk will have been silenced, and the game will be discussed in. those objective terms which its full potential merits.