Players ‘too polite’

Press, 28 June 1989, Page 64

Players ‘too polite’

By

KEVIN TUTTY

The New Zealand women’s hockey team will have to be less polite on the field if it wants to improve its international results.

The coach of the team, Pat Barwick, said on her return from Australia yesterday — where the national team lost a fivematch series — that the players learnt they were too nice.

“More than one person said to me that we’re too polite. If we don’t make a clean tackle we are almost apologetic. If the Australians don’t stop you cleanly, they will stop you some other way.”

Mrs Barwick said the tactics were nothing new in international hockey. Subtle body checking has been used for years at international level and the Australians had learnt that to compete with the Europeans, they had to use the same tactics. Mrs Barwick was not using the tactics as an excuse for New Zealand’s

0-5 series loss to the Olympic gold medallist, but said the New Zealanders would have to be more hard-nosed in their attitude to the opposition.

“The Australians are very subtle. On one occasion one of our defenders was trying to get to a ball in the circle but was jostled by an Australian and they were awarded a pen-alty-corner.

“After the second test when we marked them closely and held them to 2-1, they were quoted as saying we were very physical in that game, but Ramesh Patel (the New Zealand coaching director who watched the game) felt it was a good open match. That was probably said to unsettle us.” Mrs Barwick said the tour showed New Zealand had made progress from last year. “We conceded 22 goals but scored seven ourselves and that was more than we had scored in the last two tournaments. If we had scored only one or two goals. I

would have been worried, but we scored seven, set up many more opportunities, and were able to put real pressure on the Australians for long periods. “Where they are so good is in the circle. They dive and lunge to score goals and in the first game (which New Zealand lost 1-6) our defenders were not prepared for that.” The Australians practise those skills on a watered synthetic surface without fear of grazes or burns. The only watered synthetic surface in New Zealand is in Wellington and none of the New Zealand side lives in Wellington.

New Zealand would have to work on strengthening its defence, said Mrs Barwick. “We knew before we left that we were inexperieced in that area and we will have to improve our trapping and tackling further before the World Cup (in Sydney in May next year).”