Smiling faces could be seen Sunday evening at the Oosterplas. Not those of Den Bosch – we saw those earlier in the afternoon, but now those of Stichtsche. They won the EHL placement match against Mannheimer (3-1) and are ready for revenge in May. Because grabbing the national title, Gilles van Hesteren is sure of that.
Coach Gilles van Hesteren – in his final weeks at SCHC – just rewarded his team in the circle with some uplifting words. Mannheimer was defeated in a game no one wanted to play. That should have been the final game of the tournament. But devastated they were Sunday afternoon. Because this was just the EHL, winning the national title is the goal.
A lot happened to the team in less than forty hours. Friday night’s disappointment was still huge. How do you patch up a team for a placement match after yet another bash? Van Hesteren begins by telling. ‘I left them that night for a while. Saturday we got together. Discussed things. What it does to us. What the learning points are. Good things were said to each other. Things spoken and beautiful words shared. We have a lot of confidence in ourselves. In how we play. In who we want to be.
Photo: Willem Vernes
The match you don’t want to play
In order not to look like a wild card, the European tournament had to end well. ‘This was definitely the match you don’t want to play,’ said the coach. ‘But I didn’t see anything of that,’ he adds. The goal was to start strong. That succeeded through goals by Maud van den Heuvel in the sixth minute and Pien Dicke three minutes later. ‘We should have extended the score further after that, but we hardly gave anything away.’
‘Mannheimer takes the goalkeeper off three minutes before time,’ he continued. ‘I’m just happy about that. That does something to us again. In that phase we also pick up a green card. So we’re down to two men. We have to go deeper. And we still don’t give anything away’, he says. The qualification match thus became much more important. ‘All sorts of instructive things happened. Which we need when it really matters.’
Van Hesteren joined the team from Bilthoven last summer. Because Lucas Judge had to leave in mid-June, he jumped into the gap. Actually he didn’t want to be the one in charge, but he decided to help the team anyway. So he did not experience all the suffering SCHC has suffered in recent years. ‘I’m only starting to get to know them a bit now, when there’s a bit more pressure involved. That was never the case in the league. I see other dynamics emerging now that things are exciting for once,’ the coach says.
Photo: Willem Vernes
The scratch of lost finals
Logical tension. Because the pressure on Stichtsche’s shoulders is great. ‘It’s not nothing when you always lose at the decisive moment. The numbers don’t lie,’ he says. ‘But fortunately we also have a good number of new players. Those haven’t experienced the past. But there’s definitely a scratch on two-thirds of the group,’ he says honestly.
The first chance at a major prize this season has failed. And that still hurts Van Hesteren. ‘If we could play it again now, I’m sure we’d win it,’ he says. And the way he tells it makes you believe it. On the night from Friday to Saturday, he watched all the footage back. Pulled through frame by frame one night. ‘We know what we didn’t do right,’ he says.
‘Scoring more goals,’ he responds briefly. But there is so much more than that, but he prefers to keep quiet about that. In terms of character, he says it’s all right. ‘They have remained themselves despite quite a few irritating situations,’ he says. ‘That convex side of Maud, with all due respect. That’s not possible at all. The VAR really never could have seen that,’ he is critical. He is sure of his own analysis. Even calls it fact. ‘If you look at the corners Den Bosch got against us. Not one of those is actually justified. And I mean that. They do something very clever. Only nobody sees it. Nobody is on it. They jump into players, run into sticks that are stationary. Just look back at the footage,’ he stresses. ‘They take corners with it every time. They do that super handily. All credit to them, because it’s been allowed for years. But it’s not our kind of game.’
Photo: Willem Vernes
Finishing with the national title
It was his little son who put everything back into perspective on Friday night. ‘He told me he was glad I was home on Monday now. Could go looking for Easter eggs with me,’ he said. That is also the reason he is quitting after this season. ‘There is no reason for me not to coach this team. I’m having a great time. But I’m only there to help them. I enjoy coaching but it is not a sustainable profession. I enjoy it the most but I am a dad and at work they need me too. You can only coach if you can do it almost full-time. Let me do a little training next season. I do want to be a T3. That’s the best of both worlds.’
In his final weeks coaching SCHC, he has a goal. Realizing his team’s dream. ‘They want to become champions. The national title is even more important than the EHL. In May we want to be on the highest scaffold. And we will succeed. I am really convinced of that, otherwise I would never have started.’
by Hockey.nl
