What do you expect of a team in an Olympic year? That all players are fully fit and injury-free and all coaches are in place, but in India, it doesn’t quite happen that way. With just five months to go the 2016 Rio Olympics, the preparations of the Indian senior women’s hockey team have taken a massive hit with its strategy coach Mathias Ahrens stepping down.
Although it is learnt that Ahrens has cited pressing personal grounds for his exit, it is not difficult to see that he was not marginalized as he was demoted to a strategy coach from being the head coach after Aussie Neil Hawgood took charge as head coach for the second time after quitting his job in late 2014.
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Clearly, a coaching leaving with the Olympics round the corner is not a good augury for the team’s preparations. Of course, the hockey federation will brush aside his exit and affirm all is well – one can understand that having one head coach and one strategy coach, who was earlier head coach was going to trigger a collision path. Insiders say Ahrens was not comfortable working under chief coach Andrew Neil Hawgood.
Ahrens had joined as head coach in May 2015, ahead of the World League semifinals in Belgium – it is learnt that he submitted his resignation to Hockey India (HI) chief Narinder Batra last week.
There has been no shortage of drama over the women’s team head coach. New Zealand’s Anthony Thornton was appointed in January 2015, but he failed to turn up owing to ill health, which left the women’s team without a head coach for close to six months before Ahrens arrived.
He was originally appointed head coach of the women’s team after Hawgood had resigned in November 2014. Hawgood also did not get a significant role in Malaysia (took up a role with Malaysia Hockey Confederation after quitting India job) – even Terry Walsh took up a role there and he returned to India for the second time first as an assistant coach on October 28 but three days after he joined, he was appointed as the chief coach, thus Ahrens as strategy coach.
One would love to know why Ahrens quit his job!
