Graham Reid instils team-first attitude among juniors

BENGALURU: The past few months have been a roller-coaster ride for Indian hockey. The men’s team’s bronze medal-winning feat coupled with the women’s fourth-place finish has pushed the sport into the limelight. While the dust settles on their achievements, the Vivek Sagar Prasad-led junior men’s team will look to ride on the crest of the seniors’ success and defend the junior world Cup title won in 2016.
But in these uncertain times, the road to success has many challenges and the Indian team is gearing up to overcome them as the junior hockey extravaganza gets under way in Bhubaneswar on November 24.
With an eye on regaining the trophy, senior men’s team chief coach Graham Reid has been roped in to put the finishing touches to the team’s groundwork. Reid has been working with the junior squad for the past month and moved to Bhubaneswar — where the team has gathered for acclimatisation — last week.
While the team has been a work in progress over the past two years with BJ Kariappa at the helm, the lack of international match exposure due to the pandemic has been a dampener. But Reid believes that in the given circumstances, the team is well prepared, especially with match practice having been against their senior counterparts.
“They had practice games against senior boys before the team left for Tokyo which was valuable for both the teams. In the camp in Bengaluru recently, they played against each other again and the junior boys have been performing well. Also, the senior camp will move here next week. We will be able to play more practice matches against them.” explained the Australian during a virtual press conference on Friday.
In the short span that he has been with the team, Reid admitted that he can’t change much in terms of their game, but is working more as a relationship coach.
“It’s more icing on the cake rather than having to rebuild anything. Togetherness and team first are very important. Those are things which can be added. In the last month I have been (more like) a relationship coach as relationships with the players are important especially when the chips are down, those things can come to the fore,” he said.
Reid also pointed out that since Kariappa spent time assisting him in the senior camp during the pandemic, the juniors have imbibed the work ethics well. “Kariappa spent a lot of time with the senior group during the Covid situation. A lot of the exercise, drills and terminology we use has already trickled down to the junior group in the past year.”
Given the team has been training in isolation for a long time, the players have made good use of the span to brush up their English, through classes held at the SAI, Bengaluru premises. Also, a psychologist has been working with the unit.