Plans devised to train players with SOPs, says hockey coach

KARACHI: Pakistan hockey team’s head coach Olympian Khwaja Junaid said on Sunday that physical and hockey skills training would be started in the open field when the federal government allowed resumption of sports activities.

Talking to ‘The News’, he said the team management has conceived a programme of individual hockey skills training and physical exercises for senior and junior teams. Different methods of training would be used to ensure a distance of three to four feet between the players, he added.

Junaid said that the training of goalkeepers and short-corner drag flickers was easy while maintaining physical distance. Dribbling the ball individually and attempts at goals were also possible with physical distance, he added.

He said that a number of hockey skills training can be organised in which players would maintain distance, including use of cones for dribbling and cutting the ball, and wall-knocking.

“Hockey is such a game that it can be practised and played in a one-to-one scenario, two versus two, three versus three, and so on,” said the head coach.

FIH has allowed its members to organise matches by adopting all health-related SOPs, keeping in view the prevalence of corona-virus in their respective countries.

For past three months, the players who were part of senior and junior teams’ training camps have been following the training programme given to them by PHF at their homes.

It has been learnt that the Ministry for IPC would in a couple of days examine the possibility of allowing resumption of activities of non-contact sports for professional as well as amateur sportspeople at government-run sports complexes, gymnasiums and grounds.