The hockey family is mourning the loss of two influential characters who recently passed away - Pakistan's Col Retd Nadeem Ahmed and Bill Colwill from England.
Col Retd Nadeem Ahmed passed away on the 8 November in Nigeria where he was taking part in an Olympic Solidarity Programme.
As an athlete, he was a former national team player for Pakistan and a captain of the Pakistan Army team. Once his playing days had come to an end Nadeem became a member of the Coaching Panel of the Asian Hockey Federation and a member of the Coaching and Development Committee of the Pakistan Hockey Federation. He was also Former Executive Board Member of the Pakistan Federation.
As coach he was heavily involved in the development of High Performance and Education not just in his home country, Pakistan, but also in many other countries such as Sri-Lanka, Cambodia, Qatar, Zambia and most recently Nigeria.
As part of his coaching development he became an FIH Hockey Academy Educator at the first Educator course in Asia, in Kuantan in 2015.
In England, Bill Colwill died aged 86 on 13 November 2016. Tributes have poured in from the hockey family all around the world for one of the foremost hockey journalists of the late 20th century.
In a hockey career that spanned over six decades, Bill was involved in all aspects of the game and had an encyclopaedic knowledge of the game that earned him the highest respect from all those who knew him.
It was as a sports journalist that he became best known, writing for the Independent Newspaper from its launch in 1986, as well as many other publications covering both domestic and international hockey.
He received the FIH Presidents Award for Hockey in 2007. For a full obituary go to The Hockey Museum website.
