Patience and flexibility key to success: Indian men's hockey team chief coachTerry Walsh

Newly-appointed coach of the Indian men’s hockey teamTerry Walsh feels that patience and flexibility are the two main attributes that a person needs to be successful in a country such as India where the job can be quite demanding.

“According to my view, it’s about one’s personality and flexibility. If you come to the Indian environment without flexibility, you will stagnate and die. It’s not possible to deliver unless you are flexible,” Walsh told reporters on Friday.

“You also have to have a degree of patience because it takes time to mould and change things here. It’s not an instant thing.

“Some of the people who worked here previously expected instant changes which are very difficult to achieve here,” he said referring to Charlesworth and Chappell.

The Australian, who was a silver medalist at the 1976 Montreal Olympic Games, was appointed chief coach of the Indian men’s team last month after the removal of another Australian, Michael Nobbs.

Walsh said that he had done his homework before landing in India. He had this to say when asked if he had consulted Ric Charlesworth, former coach of the Indian team, of what to expect in India: “I played with him (Charlesworth for about 14 years). I had reasonable interaction with him before coming here. Our interaction was all about flexibility and how to be patient. Everyone can raise issues but the difficult part is to find solutions.”

“When you talk about high performance in international hockey, it’s about finding solutions. You can’t perform if you don’t have trust,” he said.

Walsh believes that all Indian players are skillful, but they need direction.

“The first impression I had of Indian players are that they are very skillful but they are careless,” he said.

“I did not set any specific goals before coming here because you have to be realistic. We shouldn’t forget that we are 10th in the world. My main aim will be to see the team progress sensibly.”

“The players are looking for direction. So we need a viable programme which includes development of coaches and players at grass-root level, but I don’t know how much time it will take to achieve this,” the 59-year-old said.

“We have to take some elements from Australia and some elements from Europe and blend them together. It will be an interesting experience,” Walsh added.

He also talked about how he has no problems in working with Hockey India’s High Performance Director, Roelant Oltmans.

“The common aim for both of us is to put correct process in place. Over a period of time results will come. We just have to ensure that what we are doing is similar to world’s best practices that are followed in modern day hockey,” he said.