India coach Sjoerd Marijne has often advocated a player-first philosophy, insisting it was always team work. After defeat to England too, he refused to apportion blame to any individual.
“We not only have to address individual mistakes but work as a team. In the first two quarters the level was not good enough like yesterday. We know we have to improve. I told them before the tournament that we need to work on our consistency. I am happy with the end of the match though. We fought back, we created opportunities and penalty corners,” Marijne said after the game, trying to find positives in the loss.
He also defended his players and the poor defence. “Players don’t do it with purpose. But it was not only about defence. The speed of the game in the beginning was not good enough. We held the ball too long, we lost the ball too much,” he added.
READ: Clumsy India goes down to England
Asked what were the lessons learnt from this game, he refused to get into details. “I told the players it is easy to pinpoint mistakes but it is better we think what went wrong and why so that it doesn’t happen next time. The big question is why we dropped from our yesterday’s level. That’s what we need to talk about because if you have reasons for poor performance, you can improve,” he insisted.
England, on the other hand, was happy after the loss in opening game.
“It was important to get our tournament going. Yesterday we struggled a bit against Germany so it was nice to get the result. Every team in the tournament will get better and learn as they go on,” coach Bobby Crutchley said, adding that the key was to avoid turnovers and intercept India's aerial passes, both of which his team managed to do successfully to prevent India's counter-attacks.
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