Fulton focus on strengthening defence

The biggest weakness of the Indian hockey team is undoubtedly their defence. While they can match the best in the world when in attacking flow, they still flounder at the back. In fact, their inability to safeguard leads has seen them snatch defeat from the jaws of victory on multiple occasions.

It’s this baggage Craig Fulton, the newly-appointed men’s coach, inherits. Many of his predecessors have tried fixing the issue but with limited success. The South African, addressing the media for the first time since taking charge on April 29, minced no words in saying his focus will be on defence.

“Personality wise I like to defend to win. I like to have our defensive structures in place because it’s the first step of attacking. If you want to play counter-attacking style, it won’t help if you can’t defend because you are never going to win the ball back if you can’t defend,” said the South African.

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“If you are 2-0 down, you can’t sit in your own half and wait for things to happen. You have to make the game happen, you have to press high, and you have to put the opposition under pressure. So we are going to need to do both. I’m a very attacking coach, I like to score goals but also would like to do it with a very solid defensive base.”

Fulton, who is taking charge during a tricky phase with the all-important Asian Games scheduled in September-October, admitted he doesn’t have much time on his hands to implement his methods fully.

“I think it’ll take a bit of time but analysing the DNA of the team, it’s fast, colourful, skilful and talented. They are very strong on set pieces and got good goalkeepers. So India have all the ingredients, it’s more a case of really being composed enough to do it and execute, especially in the offence. We have really good strikers but we need them to start firing consistently.”

Fulton, who worked as an assistant coach with the immensely successful Belgium team from May 2018 till the end of the World Cup earlier this year, said his main target is to make India strong travellers.

“India is an exciting team, filled with talent and flair. One thing that struck me was India was very difficult to play in Asia and specifically in India. The challenge from the outside is how successful can India be outside of India in a consistent performance way. All the big tournaments for India for the foreseeable future now are outside of India. The objective is to be consistent outside of home.”

Fulton said his first major target is to win the Asian Games gold and punch the ticket to Paris Olympics.

“The priority is to qualify for Paris Olympics by winning the Asian Games gold. We will be using the Pro League, the four-nation tournament in Spain and the Asian Champions Trophy to really set us up into strong unit.”