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National Coach completes Hockey Course in India

Mar 30, 2010 Sports

Hoping to host workshop for locals

National hockey coach and President of the Guyana Hockey Board, Philip Fernandes, recently returned from New Delhi, India after completing a high performance coaching course kept in conjunction with the men’s hockey Hero Honda World Cup.
This is the first time that a coach from Guyana has been invited to participate in such a course as applications were accepted from coaches worldwide and limited spots were available.
Fernandes indicated that he was pleasantly surprised when he was selected as one of only 28 participants for the course with Guyana being the only country to be represented where hockey is still being played on grass.
The course was conducted over 5 days running from 6th – 10th March inclusive and was led by FIH Master Coach Tayyab Ikram of Macau who was assisted by Argentine FIH Master Coach Rodolfo Mendoza and FIH Grade 1 coaches Herman Kruis of Germany and Tahir Zaman of Pakistan.
In addition to the core facilitators, participants on the course were exposed to presentations by several top coaches, some of whom were the head coaches responsible for the very teams participating in the World Cup.
The course comprised of instructor presentations, viewing and analysing matches at the World Cup and group presentations and discussions based on analyses.
According to Fernandes, among the participants of the course were some very experienced and knowledgeable coaches, most of whom coach professionally.
“It was a great opportunity to share ideas and discuss the game with coaches of this calibre. Even the coaches who were participants like myself were vastly experienced having worked along on the coaching staff of some of the national programs in the leading hockey nations and some of whom I have only read about or saw on TV,” Fernandes said
The content of the course according to Fernandes was focused on high performance aspects of the game and mostly involved analysing systems and styles of play and methods of competing against such tactics.
Fernandes was surprised in particular at the great detail of the match analyses as every single aspect of the game and almost every move of every player means something to the high performance coach.
“There was a lot of information to absorb in a short time. I can appreciate why the top teams travel with an extensive coaching staff as it is virtually impossible for one or two coaches to identify all the nuances of the opposition and their planned strategies during the match. Video analysis software was featured extensively on the course as a result of coaches needing to track the movement of each player and determine the reasons for their decision-making,” he informed.
Upon his return, Fernandes has resumed his task of preparing the Guyana national women’s hockey team to compete in the upcoming Central American and Caribbean Games being held in Puerto Rico this July. He has indicated his renewed enthusiasm for the task and hopes to apply much of what he learned in India to this task.
“This job is insurmountable, but that is what makes it so very interesting. It is a great challenge and the ladies are dedicated enough for us to make a genuine shot at surprising everyone at the CAC Games,” he felt.
Apart from his national duty, Fernandes hopes to repeat the effort last year of facilitating a hockey coaching workshop for local coaches where he can hopefully pass on the newly acquired ideas and knowledge.
He hopes to make the most of this opportunity to ensure Guyana receives maximum benefit and although the cost of the course was self-funded, he expressed sincere gratitude to the Guyana Olympic Association for covering the cost of the airline ticket which was a substantial part of the overall cost.

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