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Planet Field Hockey

The Polish are among the seven teams who managed to qualify to the World Cup finals at the qualifying tournament in Edinburgh. Poland gave quite a good performance winning 5 out of 8 matches and finally beating 5:2 Belgium in the 3rd/4th game. Below is an interview with the coach who had prepared the team to the Edinburgh event and led it through the whole tournament.

Jerzy Joskowiak, born 1960, a long-time player on two Polish teams - Rogowo and Grunwald Poznan - had played 5 matches for the national team at the 1982 World Cup in India, but his greatest successes came when he retired and started his coaching career in Grunwald. This year the military club earned the "gold crown" being the best both in the indoor and outdoor competitions.

Joskowiak, who has worked with the national team since the end of 2000, managed to gain bronze medal in the European Indoor Nations Cup (19-21 January in Luzern, Switzerland) and won the majority of the outdoor games with results of 12 won 3 lost and 1 draw this year.

JAKUB KUMOCH (PlanetFieldHockey): Congratulations Jerzy! Your players have qualified to the World Cup 2002. It will be the third consecutive world event Poland will play in after World Cup 1998 and Sydney Olympics. What can we expect of you in Malaysia?
JERZY JOSKOWIAK: Kuala Lumpur World Cup will be a very high-level tournament. For the first time, instead of 12 we will see the 16 world top teams... including the best ones, like Holland, Korea, Australia or Pakistan. I'm really happy we will be among them. But our team is quite strong now and we will fight for entering the top.

JK: Poland played a very good game for the third place beating Belgium - the fourth team of Europe - 5:2. Didn't you expect more before the tournament anyway?
JJ: You can always expect more. Unfortunately we lost to Argentina and Spain. The way we played these two games was not the poorest one, but the results were clear. The most important thing is that we're in the finals. There are so many countries who failed to qualify, including a strong team of Canada. Our place in Malaysia was fully deserved and battled out after a good tournament.

JK: Are there any teams you were astonished at in Edinburgh?
JJ: For sure the Argentinians. They won the tournament in a beautiful style winning all the games. They have a very strong goal-scoring pair Jorge Lombi - Mario Almada. For each rival they were enormously dangerous. For me and for many observers the true surprise however was Chile. They showed a good hockey and fought like equal with higher-ranked teams. Of course, quite a good progress was made by the Japanese, who unexpectedly qualified to the World Cup and took sixth place in Edinburgh.

JK: What about India, whose performance was rather a poor one? We saw a team with such a great traditions having real difficulties with qualifying...
JJ: India made some radical changes in their squad and some new players got their chance (...) I'm sure, the Indians will still be dangerous in the future. They build their team for the 2004 Olympic Games I think.

JK: How is your team going to prepare itself to the World Cup?
JJ: For the time being, the players need a rest as the season was really exhausting. We'll start working in the Autumn. At the end of 2001 we'll take part in the Champions Challenge in New Delhi. After that, we'd like to have a possibility to go abroad and prepare ourselves in a climat more similar to the Malaysian one. Due to the World Cup we'll have to withdraw national team members from the whole 2001/2002 indoor season. I still don't know how to deal with that problem, as my own club Grunwald Dramers Poznan should play in the European Indoor Club Championships in Spain.

JK: All Polish hockey consists of 15 teams only and just several hundreds competitive players. Are there any possible "human resources", national team can use in the nearest future?
JJ: Our real hope are junior players. I hope the national team's successes will strenghten the idea of practicing the sport of field hockey among our youth, and some talented young players will be more motivated to fight for their place in the team.

Jakub R. Kumoch

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