Indian hockey head coach Roelant Oltmans working on defensive structure

Roelant Oltmans working with the Indian men’s team

The new head coach as well as the high-performance director of the men’s national hockey team Roelant Oltmans, assured that the team was working on building a firm defensive organization and switching to different styles of play in different situations as the preparation for the Hockey World League finals and the 2016 Brazil Olympics.

The 61-year old coach said, “Organisation of defence is very important. If your defence is well organised you have confidence while going for an attack. If your defence is not well organised you can be in trouble in counter attacks,” as The Indian Express reports.

Oltmans also expressed his desire to make this Indian team play in an unpredictable and dynamic manner which changes its playing style according to the situation in the game. He still believes that there is a lot of room for improvement when the team is going forward.

He added, “In France and Spain (where the team toured recently), we tried to implement these things. We have very good players in attack who scored some very good goals like the one by Akashdeep and Ramandeep. We have rooms for improvement in an attack. It’s good to have some series in line so that we can see how we can apply these changes.”

“The process is important”

The Dutchman believes that the upcoming tournaments like the 3-match series in New Zealand and the Hockey World League finals will be the part of the process that will complete the preparation for the 2016 Rio Olympics. The performances of the boys will matter more than the results that come out of these tournaments.

He added, “In India people always looked for results but we cannot always think about the result. The process is important. I am happy because I see the players improving every day. They are learning new things and they are doing different things everyday. We are in the process of preparing ourselves for the end result. The end of the process is 11 months from now (Rio Olympics). All these tours and tournaments are just part of the process of preparing ourselves.”

The Indian men’s team is in New Delhi for a three-week training stint before leaving for a 3-match test series in New Zealand. The training camp location was changed at the last moment as the Sports Authority of India did not complete the work on the preferred Bangalore location.