In a week-long stint that Terry Walsh has had with the Indian team, the chief coach has found out that there are a lot of things which have to be put in place before the team will do well consistently.
Walsh was hired as the head coach, a post which was lying vacant after another Australian, Michael Nobbs, left the team.
Walsh reckons that a viable programme which also includes Hockey India league (HIl) will help India achieve its aim of regaining the lost pride.
On a day when he was also appointed as the head coach of HIl’s sixth team Kalinga lancers, Walsh said, “ indian hockey needs direction. Its players need right guidance. The first impression I had of Indian players is that they are very skillful but are careless. They don’t play the game in a secured manner and lose the position easily by recklessly passing. Therefore, to put this right, we need a long-term plan. We need to put Indian hockey under a viable process, so that we can expect a consistent good show from them. But we need to be flexible and patient,” Walsh said at a city hotel on Friday.
Walsh stressed on the importance of exercise, mental conditioning camps to boost self-belief and correct preparation.
“Firstly, Indians are well short in terms of physical fitness as compared to the Australians or the Germans. Secondly, when we used to play the Indian team 30 years back, the Aussie teams used to play with lack of confidence. I don’t think the current Indian team has enough self-belief. Third, the way they train is not of international standard which the top teams follow. So, there is a lot of work to be done. In the past a lot of areas have been neglected and we need to correct those as soon as we can. Instant success is not possible,” Walsh reasoned.
The coach also said that although he will put his ideas and try and adopt a new new culture of, the style will be very much Indian. “Since I have come here, I have put forward my ideas on how to train and other things. So far the responses have been good although the programmes may not be the way they used to be. We have to take some elements from Australia and some elements from Europe and blend them together. It will be an interesting experience but the culture will be Indian,”he said.