PHF to submit 2020 vision to govt

KARACHI: The PHF will submit a national hockey strategic plan for 2020 to the federal government next week for formal approval, ‘The News’ has learnt.

The plan envisages strengthening school hockey across the country and club hockey at district level.

It includes various national ranking tournaments, revival of departmental teams, preparation for World Cup and Olympics qualification and a professional league.

The PHF’s present management, which took charge in August last year, took various steps to revive the national game. It organised the national championship and CNS all Pakistan national tournament. In both these events the winners, the runners-up and the players who performed well got millions of rupees in prizes.

One of the most significant and noteworthy success of PHF present management was to get sponsorship for the national championship from various private and public institutions.

This showed that the confidence of public and private institutions has been restored. In the days of the previous management, the federal government and private institutions publicly refused to give funds for the promotion of the game due to various irregularities and alleged misuse by officials.

Sources in the PHF confirmed that a handsome amount of sponsorship for the national championship in Karachi last month came from big institutions of the country.

It was for the first time in several years that hockey players earned a good amount of money and lucrative prizes.

Another big domestic tournament, the 2nd Chief of the Army Staff Hockey Championship, will be held in April.

The sources said the national junior championship would be held in February.

It shows the national game is coming out of the situation which led to the Green-shirts failing to qualify for the World Cup 2014 and Rio Olympics 2016.

PHF president Khalid Khokhar, when contacted, told ‘The News’ that they had developed a roadmap for the development of hockey. “We are improving gradually and moving ahead step by step. The most significant thing is that the confidence of hockey fraternity, which had been shaken, is restored and all stakeholders of the game have realised that the situation is much better now,” he said.

“We have developed a national hockey strategic plan for 2020. We are focusing on bringing the Green-shirts into the mainstream of world hockey. It cannot be achieved until we put our own house in order. We will strengthen our domestic hockey which will start from school level. The players will come up from that level to the national level,” he said.

He said that during 2016, PHF would start activities at schools and clubs at district level and establish four academies and an excellence academy, which would be

“the core of our planning and provide budding talent” for our national senior and junior outfits in the near future.

The PHF president said that the idea of a professional league was somewhat premature, but “we are working on it seriously and hope that after a couple of months we will be in a position to say something concrete about it”.

He said that professional league was an important part of PHF strategic plan.

He said that funds was not a problem as PHF was working to get sponsorship from the private sector and exploring other options to make PHF self-reliant. “The federal government is also helping us and providing funds according to the requirements,” he claimed. The PHF president said he did not believe in making tall claims. “Actions speak louder than words. The hockey lovers will see in coming months what PHF is going to do at the grassroots level to promote the national game,” he said.

He said no one would complain of lack of hockey events at the grassroots level. The confidence of hockey community which had been eroded due to poor performance of the national teams would be restored in 2016, he said.