Deep defence is coach Fulton’s mantra

From the moment he took over the Indian hockey team, head coach Craig Fulton has been crystal clear in what his mantra will be: defend. “Mine is to defend to win. It was pretty clear at the beginning,” the South African stressed yet again on Thursday.

It’s common knowledge now that the primary weakness of Indian hockey – present and past teams – is defence. Blessed with skilfull players, the natural tendency of both the strikers and midfielders is to attack; deep defending a mere afterthought for most players.

Many coaches before Fulton have tried to alter the method by focussing more on defence and less on attack but the end result has often being catastrophic. The players keep their shape at the back for a while but simply can’t resist going forward and end up doing exactly that after a few temptations.

When they do go forward they end up leaving gaps in the midfield and several teams have often exploited this weakness to hit them on the counter, especially in the final stages of the game. Eventually coaches give up and switch to an attacking formula which at least allows the Indians to play their natural way instead of being caught in a flux.

Fulton, who took charge of the team in April following their dismal performance at the World Cup in January where they finished ninth, reiterated there won’t be any change in his ideology despite not having much time to implement it in full ahead of the all-important Asian Games.

“It’s a challenge for all teams, not just the Indian team (to defend),” he told DH on the sidelines of the ‘Sunehra Safar’, a send-off ceremony organised by Hockey India for the Hangzhou trip.

“Lot of teams are good with the ball and if you are scoring 2-3 goals, it’s good. But if you end up conceding 4-5 goals, it’s very bad. You’ve gotta balance that out. You’ve got good players and we just need to enhance the defensive side of what we want to do and that will help us in attack.”

Former captain and midfield lynchpin Manpreet Singh said although most of his colleagues in the centre of the pitch like to attack, they understand why Fulton is laying importance to defence.

“It’s quite simple with him actually. If we are defending, Craig wants all 10 outfield players to be defending and if we are attacking he wants all 10 to be attacking. I feel this is a good strategy. Earlier, we were just going attack, attack, attack and most of the times we would miss opportunities.

“And since we were focussed on attacking, we were not defending well. Craig wants us to be compact. He wants to stay focussed on defending instead of always trying to attack, missing opportunities and putting pressure on defence. He’s okay if we create less opportunities but be effective whenever we create them.”

Manpreet, one of the senior most players in the squad, said the team is determined to win the gold in Hangzhou. “The team is doing really well right now. We are playing really well right now and we want to win the Asian Games because that will secure our ticket to Paris Olympics. We are taking things very seriously. If we play our natural game, we can beat any team and win the gold.”

Squads:

Men: PR Sreejesh, Krishan Pathak, Varun Kumar, Amit Rohidas, Jarmanpreet Singh, Harmanpreet Singh (captain), Sanjay, Sumit, Nilakanta Sharma, Hardik Singh (vice-captain), Manpreet Singh, Vivek Sagar Prasad, Shamsher Singh, Abhishek, Gurjant Singh, Mandeep Singh, Sukhjeet Singh, Lalit Kumar Upadhyay.

Women: Savita (captain), Bichu Devi Kharibam, Deepika, Lalremsiami, Monika, Navneet Kaur, Neha, Nisha, Sonika, Udita, Ishika Chaudhary, Deep Grace Ekka (vice-captain), Vandana Katariya, Sangita Kumari, Vaishnavi Vittal Phalke, Nikki Pradhan, Sushila Chanu, Salima Tete.