Sjoerd Marijne defends camp amidst Covid-19 pandemic

Six Covid-19 positive cases rocked Hockey India’s camp for the Olympic-bound squads here at the Sports Authority of India (SAI) centre last month. With international tournaments seemingly distant due to the continuous surge in coronavirus cases, many questioned the need for a camp in these testing times.

Sjoerd Marijne, the Indian women’s hockey coach, defended the national body’s decision to conduct camps for the men’s and women’s squads. The 46-year-old Dutch felt leaving a long gap between training isn’t ideal for the players.

“Michael Phelps is a guy who won a lot of medals. He is working everyday of the year. It’s not like because the Olympics happen once in four years, you start working a year before the big tournament. It’s the same with us. We need all the time. Coming back to the levels we were six months ago takes time,” said Marijne in a webinar on Saturday.

“Playing hockey is completely different from doing exercises in your room. It’s a contact sport and that’s why it takes time to come back to the best level. Countries like the Netherlands are already playing competitions every week. If we don’t do things like going back to training, we are going to get further and further behind of those countries. So it’s important that we started,” he explained.

Apart from captain Manpreet Singh, others from the men’s team who were hospitalised for testing positive were Jaskaran Singh, Surender Kumar, Varun Kumar, Krishna Bhadur Pathak, and Mandeep Singh. Head coach Graham Reid said these six players are back in the set-up, recovered, but their return to training had posed challenges. “It’s about getting the players to understand that they have to be patient. That was probably the toughest part. We kept telling them to slow down during training. We used the help of their team-mates to motivate them,” said Reid.

“It was important for them to understand how serious this disease can be. It’s very easy to think that we will be okay. Thankfully, not much damage is done. We will begin full training in the next five weeks,” he added.