David John named interim Indian Hockey coach in the place of sacked Roelant Oltmans
Hockey India sacked Roelant Oltmans as the head coach of the Indian hockey team and for now, current high-performance director David John will take over as the interim coach. The decision came at the end of the three-day Hockey India conclave where they decided to took some hard steps.
Oltmans joined the list of foreign coaches who sacked by Hockey India. In 2013, he was initially appointed as the High-Performance director and later he started to give his services as a head coach when his compatriot Paul Van Ass left controversially in 2015.
A high-profile meeting held in Delhi where several top Indian players participated. Over twenty-four members featured including Harbinder Singh, B.P Govinda, V. Baskaran, Thoiba Singh, Dr. A.B. Subbaiah, Dr. R.P Singh, Joydeep Kaur, Sardar Singh, P.R Sreejesh, Manpreet Singh, Roelant Oltmans, Jugraj Singh, Arjun Halappa, Hans
“To make results a reality, we need to make hard decisions for the greater good of the future of hockey in India. The current format of coaching was not showing results beyond a certain level,” said Harbinder Singh, the chairman of Hockey India’s selection committee, at the end of the meeting as reported by Hindustan Times.
Under Oltmans guidance, India won the silver and bronze in back-to-back editions of the Sultan Azlan Shah Cup respectively. Also, he guided India to Asian Champions Trophy gold last year. This big decision indicated that the management is aiming for medals at tournaments like World League finals and Tokyo 2020.Â
“Asia can’t be a benchmark for success anymore. We need to show results beyond intent in key international tournaments where the sporadic success over the last two years is more incidental than deliberate,” said Harbinder.
