Danny Kerry has been Head Coach to England and Great Britain men since 2018, with much of the past 18 months of that tenure heavily restricted by Covid-19 lockdown.
As the coach who led Great Britain women to victory at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games, Kerry gained a reputation as a coach who paid the most meticulous attention to detail, so the uncertainties and restrictions of the past 18 months will have provided a good test of Kerry’s ability to adapt and compromise. As he explains in this interview, it was a case of players and staff pulling together and working with the realisation that every nation was in a similar situation.
“With Covid and a long training phase of very little match play, we [the coaching staff] have been careful about keeping the environment fresh while still moving us on. That is a creativity challenge and the athletes have helped with that.
“We have tried to spiral around a few key areas. By that I mean, we do similar work while trying to make it feel different. That has allowed us to build our game without it becoming too ‘samey’, despite not having match play. We must have got something right because the lads were still enjoying it. As a staff and the players, we have done a good job in keeping it fresh while still focusing on the key areas.”
That said, the forthcoming FIH Hockey Pro League matches could not come at a better time for Kerry and his team. While they have been sanguine about the fact that other teams, such as Belgium, Netherlands and India, have managed to get more international matches played, the team is eagerly awaiting their turn to take to the pitch.
“These two sets of fixtures are ridiculously important,” says Kerry. “We have had very few international opportunities, so these are rare and gold dust for us as matches with something on them. A Pro League match has a different tangible feel to it, rather than just a ‘behind closed doors test match’. We are really fortunate to have these matches.”
The Great Britain squad has managed to get one international trip in during the past few weeks. A recent trip to Malaysia gave the team a chance to play two other Olympic-bound teams – Malaysia and Japan. For Kerry, this was so much more than simply a chance to play international hockey.
“There was a massive heat and humidity challenge; we wanted to look at our squad; look at our substitution policies and it was a chance to play a very different style of opponent and use a wide variety of players to help finesse our thinking.”
Great Britain also played Japan during this trip and Kerry warned: “They are going to be a handful in Tokyo. Watch out if you have Japan in your pool.”
One major challenge for the Great Britain squad has been to get the balance right between preparing the players for the dual challenge of the European Hockey Championships [as England] and the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 [as Great Britain] and not overloading the players with information.
“That has been a major coaching challenge,” says the Head Coach. “We have tried to ensure we play our core game enough but also keep evolving as players. We had to avoid getting too comfortable with the core game and not evolving or neglecting our core game in a bid to evolve. Getting that balance right, understanding what is our core game has been key: discovering what are our strengths but still finding time to evolve aspects of our game. I think as we get nearer to the EuroHockey Championships and the Olympic Games we will focus much more around our core game and just finesse some very small but very critical extra components of the game.”
Kerry paid tribute to his coaching staff and players, saying the group felt like a ‘team’, rather thantwo groups comprising athletes and coaching staff. He also said that even though selection for the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 was looming, the group had been very supportive and they had kept discussion around selection to a minimum. “The lads have been exceptional”, he added.
When it comes to the forthcoming FIH Hockey Pro League matches against Germany, Kerry is expecting a stiff challenge. “It will test our capacity to play our game against a side that is in good form. Germany are a good team with good variability. They seem to have left some key players back in Germany, so there will be some young players who will be playing without fear.”
“For us it will be surreal. The lads are looking really forward to it. It is a capped game, there will be cameras, I think there will be extra spice and edge to it.”
You can watch the full interview here.
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