Want the team at SAI till end of year: Reid

Interview

The last few months have been very demanding for India senior men’s hockey team coach Graham Reid. Firstly, the national camp last month resumed on a disastrous note when six players, including captain Manpreet Singh, tested positive for coronavirus. This was followed by the resignations of High Performance Director David John physiotherapist David MacDonald. As if all this wasn't enough, analytical coach Chris Ciriello, Reid's right hand man, is recovering from a health issue back home in Australia and there’s no clarity if he would return. In a chat with DH on Sunday, Reid talks about the positive tests, the extra challenges at his hands owing to the resignations and why he wants the players to stay put here in SAI. Excerpts

When the players were sent on a holiday in June, one knew it could be risky because of the rising number of coronavirus across the country. And six players ended up testing positive when camp resumed in August. Were you prepared for such a situation while sending the boys home?

We all knew that could be risky. But you also have to look after the mental health of the players. We could see that they were starting to suffer in being here, away from their families. Given how important family is to all Indians, especially for younger people, the break was needed. When they came back, we hoped all things would be okay but as you know it’s a risky situation. It’s easy to catch this disease. But all the SOPs were in place by SAI, so we were quite comfortable with how things would happen and they did happen. We can now look past all that and look forward. We are now looking at SOPs on the return to play for players who have tested positive for Covid. We are very happy with how things are progressing. Of course, we are going on the conservative side. The players are young, they are keen to go out on the pitch, play, run around and do all sorts of things. But we just have to remind them there are lots of things we don’t know about this disease so we need to make sure we follow all the protocols to the letter.

You just spoke about being conservative with players who have tested positive. So are there two sets of training programmes – one for normal and another for Covid-recovered players?

In a normal training situation, you always have various stages of return to play. There are people who are injured and there are people who are going to be fully fit. All it means is that one of the sub-groups is bigger because you 5-6 in the same boat. And each individual within that 6 have individual programmes of what they can and can’t do at a particular time.

You mentioned that boys are happy to be back in the safest place possible. This camp is scheduled to last until the end of this month. Would you recommend the team staying put here considering what happened last time?

That’s to be decided by SAI. I’m preparing the boys with the intention that they would be staying here at least for the foreseeable future. The problem if you have a break is you have another two weeks quarantine, so it puts their return back by an extra two weeks. So in all likelihood, I would want them to stay here but it all depends on SAI.

Off the field, a lot of activities have taken place. High Performance Director David John and physio David MacDonald have resigned while analytical coach Chris Ciriello is yet to return from Australia. How are you coping with their sudden absence?

When you sign up for the job you always know that at various stages people’s contracts will finish. I am not going to make a comment about David. He doesn’t live in Bangalore, so I don’t have lots of contact with David. His role with the team is not necessarily day today. The physio, of course, is always an issue. It’s sad to see David leave but Covid has turned the world upside down. I don’t think there’s an industry or country that’s gotten away with anything. I think he really felt he wanted to be back with his family and as I said Australians are probably just as vulnerable with their families as players in India. We are in a little bit of a hell but people are standing up. We are in the process of finding a new physiotherapist. From the point of view of the coaching side, we are lucky enough to get (BJ) Cariappa, who is the junior coach. He has now rejoined the camp with the senior team.

Chris, while being the analytical coach, was brought on board to primarily deal with drag-flicks and defence – two areas where India had been found wanting on numerous occasions. How much of a miss is his absence with just 10 months left for Olympics?

I’ve been holding discussions with Chris and unfortunately, he’s stuck in Perth for health reasons. We can’t really control that at the moment. What we can control is what we are doing here. I have a drag-flick specialist in Holland who is waiting in the wings if you like and depending upon what needs to happen then we can call upon such a resource. Also, Chris could provide his inputs virtually from Perth. My experience is also in defence, so we have that covered. Yes, it’s a critical time over the next few months and we are trying to get the situation sorted as quickly as we can.

India have no competitive events lined up until the end of the year. Sporting events have resumed, so would request SAI to help arrange a few tournaments so that the team is match-ready rather than just training?

To be honest, we were hoping we may have something at the end of September. But I am happy with the team being here in SAI in a controlled environment till the end of the year. We are focussing on creating an environment internally. We will have internal matches. I hope everything works out and we can move to a more competitive training environment towards the end of November. Next year is actually very full of competitions. I am not too worried about the remainder of the year. We can create a good training environment so that when we travel overseas for competition, we are at the level we need to be to compete. That’s what we used to do with Australia.