While the Asian Games later this year will be his biggest challenge in the nine months since taking charge in January, Indian women’s hockey coach Sjoerd Marijne is focussed on immediate goals, insisting having a good team culture and developing consistency was more important in the long run.

The Indian team will be travelling for four practice matches in Australia next week followed by the Nations Cup in Auckland before the two big-ticket events — World Cup and Asian Games. “We had a very good tour of Argentina. We will have training and conditioning sessions as well in Australia, who play a very different style.

“There was little time to work on load management before this camp but it was important to put a benchmark for the girls to know what we expect from them. You cannot create better fitness in one or two months; chances of injuries is much higher and we want to avoid that,” Marijne noted in an interaction facilitated by SAI on Friday, revealing that the team had as many as 14 injuries when he took charge.

The Nations Cup will be important for India both to return to the Pro League and prepare for the World Cup and although Marijne was optimistic about India’s chances at the latter, he refused to predict the outcome. “I believe they have the potential but other teams haven’t been sitting still, they are also developing,” he admitted.

Asked about areas of improvement, Marijne preferred to look at the whole picture. “I want to improve everything but for me it’s more about behaviour and showing the same every time on field so that it becomes a habit. A good team culture leads to winning matches.

“The more consistency and continuity we bring in our games, our level goes that much higher. It helps that I know the girls and they know how I work; I am high demanding but there is also time to relax and you need to be able to switch quickly between the two,” he declared.

While there has been a lot of talk on the Indian men’s hockey team’s composition for the upcoming World Cup and the Asian Games, not many have spoken about the same for the women. In fact, their schedule is much tighter, with the Nations Cup also scheduled in June before the two big events.

The Nations Cup is equally important for the Indian women to try and earn back its spot in the FIH Pro league. Add to it the fact that coach Sjoerd Marijne, returning after five years to take charge in very different conditions and the challenge becomes manifold. Marijne, however, is unperturbed by it all.

“It was the same in 2018, and we also had the Commonwealth Games back then, so we had four tournaments. And we worked from tournament to tournament with the Asian Games for us being most important but that doesn’t mean we don’t want to do well at the others,” Marijne said during an interaction with select media on Friday.

“We’re using them to be at our best but I believe we can perform in every tournament and it doesn’t matter for the next one. We played the quarterfinals at the 2018 World Cup but then we also did really good at the Asian Games, winning silver. So that’s the way we’re going to do.”

The recent four-match outing against Argentina was important for the Dutchman to assess the players in competition and Marijne, while admitting there were quite a few areas to work on, was optimistic about the improvements in the side.

“I think we are moving in the right direction. I’m not talking only about winning or losing, because I didn’t play any penalty corner variations. We were training different kind of systems and I think the progress in that has been really positive.

“For us, the important thing was the benchmark set by Argentina. And you know now what is required to be able to play against the World No. 2 and be successful. The good thing was that we improved every match. And they struggled sometimes with our speed, that is something I’m quite happy with,” he explained.

While Marijne has a problem of too many tournaments, the newly-appointed junior women’s coach Tim White has little to no international assignment through the year, giving him enough time to understand and work on the team.

With Indian women’s hockey players often straddling both the senior and junior teams, White and Marijne have taken to working together during national camps to build a synergy between the sides.

“I accepted the job because I always saw India as having a lot of potential to be a really world-class team and the challenge of helping the team get to that point and also supporting the seniors is exciting,” White said in his first media interaction since taking charge.

“For any team to have sustainable success, you have to have a good collaboration between the senior and junior programmes. I’m already working with Sjoerd, we’re in the same environment, we share a lot.”

White, however, did admit that the group’s fitness was below-par. “I’ve observed that the group is lower physically than where I was in Belgium or even in Australia.

“We are going to have to work hard to be able to compete with the best junior teams and also have a flow of athletes going into the senior programme. I need to make sure I help the group understand what level of intensity they need to train at. But it’s a challenge in India for sure.”