Sjoerd Marijne is unambiguous about the task confronting him on his return to India. “To create a unit,” he says plainly.
This isn’t the usual, run-of-the-mill cliche coaches often reach for. For the Dutchman, the problem is real. Marijne didn’t publicly lay bare the team’s internal issues, but he also didn’t completely gloss over the state of the dressing room.
“I told all the girls, what happened in the past is the past,” Marijne, who began his third stint as the Indian women’s hockey team coach last month, says. “We don’t have to be best friends. We have fun together but also work really hard together. For me, it’s about performance and behavior. I also feel the girls need moments where they have joy and enjoy what they’re doing. It’s not a punishment camp.”
Those two lines — ‘we don’t have to be best friends’ and ‘it’s not a punishment camp’ — did not emerge in a vacuum. They are rooted in the fragile team environment that had taken shape under previous coach Harendra Singh.
Former coach of the national men’s and women’s hockey teams Sjoerd Marijne. (File)
Singh ‘resigned, citing ‘personal reasons’ in December. But in a letter to Hockey India and the Sports Ministry, senior players highlighted deep-seated mistrust and a rift within the team. In their letter, the players outlined multiple allegations against the veteran coach and his support staff, including ‘mental harassment’, putting the players under ‘extreme pressure’, and talking ‘nicely only to the captain and vice-captain’.
They added that the ‘captain and vice-captain do not work together’. Separately, a senior player had told The Indian Express that the team environment had ‘gone from bad to worse’ in the last few months, with ‘rising injuries, a culture of favouritism’. “All this had a negative impact on the team’s performance,” the player had said.
Already reeling from the heartbreak of missing out on the Paris Olympics, India were relegated from the Pro League — the world’s elite competition — last year and are now staring at the prospect of not qualifying for this year’s World Cup.
Hockey India SOS-ed Marijne, who guided India to a best-ever fourth-place finish at the Tokyo Olympics. On surface, the circumstances of his return — dwindling team fortunes and infighting among players — may look the same as they were when he first came to India in 2017.
But Marijne disagrees. “The condition is much better. The fitness is much further than in 2017. We started really at a very low level (in 2017), intensity-wise and tactics-wise. And you see now a lot of things in the years have improved. What we have done from 2017 till 2021, it’s continued in the last years; not everything the way I would do it, but every coach is different. There’s much better quality than in the past when I started. We have more speed, agility is much better, and verbally they are much better. A good thing is that when I ask a question, I also get more responses than in the past. So many improvements are there.”
He even points out that the facilities and the food at the Sports Authority of India’s Bengaluru Centre, the team’s base, have gotten better, aiding the team. “That doesn’t mean it will be easy to achieve the same (the heights of Tokyo Olympics),” he warns. “Absolutely not. Because I also see that other countries have developed and become better. But yeah, I also see the potential we have.”
Before he can unlock the players’ full potential ahead of next month’s do-or-die World Cup qualifiers in Hyderabad, Marijne says he must first “bring back the culture” they once worked with. “That is the main challenge,” he admits.
In his earlier stint, Marijne devoted much of his energy to fostering team spirit — hardly an ingrained concept in Indian hockey — toughening players physically and mentally, democratising team meetings, and creating an environment where players felt free to express themselves on and off the pitch.
Hockey coach Sjoerd Marijne. (Hockey India)
Alongside South African strength and conditioning coach Wayne Lombard, who has rejoined his staff, Marijne has again placed a heavy emphasis on fitness, aware that without greater speed and endurance, his structures and tactics would falter. Unsurprisingly, that has been the focus of Marijne’s first weeks back. Like the senior players, the Dutchman acknowledged there were ‘a lot of people’ carrying injuries.
“Strength was not high on the list in the past. That’s something we are bringing back,” Marijne says. “At the moment, I have to be really calm. We’re bringing back players and I can’t judge them when the fitness is not good. We are now first helping them to get back and then to see when their fitness is good, how they perform. That’s our first step in camp.”
The ultimate, long-term goal with the Los Angeles Olympics as the target remains unequivocal: “To create a unit,” he repeats.
