Nothing seems to be going right for the Indian women’s hockey team, first, after they ended with just a bronze medal at the Asian Games, and now, when they failed to qualify for the Paris Olympics. One of the biggest reasons, that has come to the fore is, poor penalty conversion rate.
The head coach Janneke Schopman has made it clear now, that to improve overall, Team India needs depth in the penalty corner department. “We need potentially more depth in our penalty corner. That is a concern in women’s hockey in India,” Schopman said on the eve of India’s FIH Pro League match against China.
“If you look at any other country in the top 10, they have 5-6 drag flickers and we do not. So there’s work that needs to be happening in talent development.” Schopman said.
Schopman Says, Team Still Hurting
The coach minced no words in admitting, the team is still hurting after failing to make it to the Olympics. “As a team we are hurting still, it has been a tough two weeks. We have done a lot of talking and thinking about what happened and why it happened. We want to show that we are a good team and we can play against good teams as well.
“We won’t get the Olympics back but we can only move forward and that is our plan here, to move forward, to play to our strengths, and to show that we can play well.” Schopman said.
“The hockey they played there we created a lot of opportunities to score goals but we didn’t (score). I believe we can play dominating hockey. We want to be a good team here and we want to score goals.
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Not Enough Matches
“In the last the six months, in the Asian Games, I wasn’t happy with our team performance there, I was happy with the performance at the Olympic qualifiers.” Schopman added.
“I have said this before… unfortunately, in the last year we haven’t played very many matches that mattered to be completely honest. We were not in the Pro League. From January to September we maybe played four official matches. In Pro League you play 16.”
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