The FIH Hockey Pro League second season gets underway in January 2020 after a hugely successful first edition. We caught up with the coaches and players from the participating teams as they prepare for the new look FIH Hockey Pro League season to get underway. In the following interview, Great Britain women’s head coach Mark Hager looks ahead to the forthcoming season.
Great Britain (FIH World Ranking: 5) finished the 2019 FIH Hockey Pro League season in eighth position. The Olympic champions from Rio 2016 will begin their FIH Hockey Pro League campaign with an away fixture against Australia (WR:2) on 1 February 2020.
What did the side learn from the first season of the FIH Hockey Pro League?
Mark Hager: “I think the biggest thing we learned from 2019 was that the week in, week out style of competition probably caught us out a little bit. It didn’t allow us to prepare, I don’t think, in the way we wanted to. Hence our results probably showed our performance wasn’t where it wanted to be. We learned a lot about that, hopefully we’ve improved in that area and got our training regime right now.”
What are the team’s ambitions for this second season?
Mark Hager: “We’d like to finish a lot higher than we did [last time], I think we finished eighth out of the nine teams, so we are probably targeting top four. We’d like to win 50 percent of our games, if we can, in the Pro League. That would be a big improvement on [the previous edition], so hopefully we can do that as well.”
What are your thoughts on the new FIH Hockey Pro League format that will be introduced in the second season?
Mark Hager: “It’s interesting, playing back-to-back games. I think that will be a bit of a challenge for most teams. It will be interesting to see how teams react to if they win the first game, and whether the team that loses comes out a little bit harder, so it’s getting used to that as well. It helps you as well, because obviously at the Olympic Games [Tokyo 2020] we will also have a couple of back-to-back games. From that perspective it gives us an opportunity to practice not only the tactical side of it but also the mental side of it.”
Which fixture are you most looking forward to?
Mark Hager: “Obviously [the fixtures at] the Stoop [against Argentina]. Hopefully we’ll get as big a crowd [as in 2019], with 12,000 on each day. We have a tough opponent in Argentina, they’ll be hard to beat, but it’s pretty hard to play against that when you think about the crowd and atmosphere of the Stoop. That was probably the highlight of this year.”
What was your favourite moment of the first season?
Mark Hager: Oh, goodness me! Just participating in it, but the Stoop was probably the big moment for me, walking through the gates and seeing 12,000 people in there. For hockey, that’s fantastic, and hopefully we can grow on that. It would be great to get 20,000 or 30,000 people watching the game, because I think if we can do that, then people will understand that it is a good game to watch.”
What message have you got for the fans to get them along to watch the matches in the second season?
Mark Hager: “Bring the ‘Barmy Army’ in, make a lot of noise! Hockey fans tend to sit and watch, they are very good and applaud good play and that’s fantastic, but we want to create an atmosphere, particularly at home. We’d like our home to be very hard for teams to come in, and to have a loud crowd full of support, I think that would be beneficial for us.”
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