Australian juniors expose N.Z. inadequacies

Press, 7 October 1987, Page 24

Australian juniors expose N.Z. inadequacies

By

KEVIN TUTTY

The comprehensive losses of the New Zealand women’s hockey team at the Champions Trophy tournament in Amsterdam in June shocked supporters of the game in New Zealand. But the maulings prompted swift and decisive action from the national coach, Pat Barwick. New Zealand was not competitive, she said on her return from Amsterdam, and initiated a six week coaching school which she hopes will help the national team make up the ground it has lost to other teams.

For many back in New Zealand who were spared seeing the national side humbled, it was difficult to understand how it could slip so dramatically in 10 months — from fourth at the World Cup, to last of six teams in the Champions Tournament, scoring only one goal and conceding 30. The two junior internationals between Australia and New Zealand at Porritt Park at the weekend helped illustrate Mrs Barwick’s reasons for New Zealand’s decline. The problem she faced with the national team were evident in the junior side. The New Zealanders

struggled to keep pace with the Australians who were able to play at a higher tempo. Their individual skills, although no better, were executed with more urgency, and subsequently the Australians had more time and space in which to make their passes. Compared to the Australians, many of the New Zealanders were ponderous in the execution of their skills, and in their mobility. Some players seemed unaware of their basic duties. When defenders are beaten inside their own half, without a second thought they are expected to turn and retreat to cover teammates. Several times one New Zealand defender was unconcerned about the need to cover her team-mates. Such inadequacies are an indictment of the coaching standards in some provinces. It is not unknown for coaches at national senior and junior level to waste valuable training time teaching players the fundamentals of the game. Mrs Barwick, on her return from Amsterdam, stressed the need for players to be quick on their feet if they hope to play at international level. “We need players who are more athletic,” she said. New Zealand is unlikely to adopt the system which the United States initiated a few years ago when it took second string college athletes, and turned them into barely passable hockey players. But Mrs Barwick and Mrs June Gill, the juniors coach, and their co-selec-tors, might have to consider turning an excess of mobile forwards into de-

fenders. Transforming attackers into defenders has been done successfully overseas — namely by the English men’s team which reached the final of the World Cup in London last year. Mrs Barwick’s bold plan to boost New Zealand’s

international ranking — gathering the national squad of 25 in Christchurch for six weeks from November 1 — might have come too late to win it a place in the Seoul Olympics next year. Its prospect of Olympic selection plummeted with its results in Amsterdam. But a similar plan could be adopted to help the junior squad which has

been entered in a qualifying tournament in New Delhi next year in a bid to '> win a place -in the first junior women’s World Cup tournament to be played in 1989. It will be a dollar sapping exercise to send a team to India, and a futile one unless the team is balanced and adequately prepared. . X