PANAJI: Indian women’s hockey team chief coach Sjoerd Marijne has emphasised on the importance of discipline and self-belief as the key aspects, after India defeated Australia 1-0 in the historic quarter-finals encounter at Tokyo 2020.
“After we qualified for the Quarters, I told the team about the importance of being in the moment and not thinking about what-ifs and that is very difficult for an athlete because there are many things that are constantly playing in your mind, things like what if we win, what if we don’t win, what if I don’t stop the ball, so what I did is showed the team a movie and the film is about staying in the moment and I think that made a big difference in this match against Australia,” said Dutch coach Sjoerd Marijne.
“We didn’t have a lot of practice matches before the Olympics so we kept telling the girls to improve with every match. We focussed on every individual improving her performance and if the personal performances are better then the performance of the team will be better. We knew that we had to learn from every match that we play since we didn’t have a lot of games leading into the competition. After we lost 1-5 to the Netherlands, it looked as if everything was shattered, it wasn’t. We only needed to make a few small improvements.
“Today, I told the girls to just play freely. The pressure is on the other team and that’s really important to know. The Quarter-Final matches are really difficult for the teams who are higher ranked. And I wanted the players to be proud of themselves today, regardless of the result. And I told the players that at the end of the match, they shouldn’t feel their legs after running so much on the pitch. We defended well today. The defensive structure during Penalty Corners was very good.
“This match also proves dreams can come true. If you start believing and you keep believing and you keep working hard, things can happen. You have to do the work to fulfill your dreams and that’s what we did today.”
Earlier, the Indian women’s team made history after reaching their first-ever Olympic semi-final on Monday. The Indian team were sublime in their attacking and defensive game as Gurjit Kaur (22′) emerged as the only goal-scorer of the match. The Indian team will face off against World Number 5 Argentina on Wednesday.
