IND vs GER, bilateral hockey series 2024: Fulton admits India ‘off-mark’ after loss to Germany

The contrast could not have been more obvious. While India coach Craig Fulton was clearly unhappy more with how his boys performed than the result, his German counterpart Andre Henning could not have asked for more. 

With vastly different domestic structures and training programmes, India and Germany came into Wednesday’s match with different sets of expectations but only one was successful. “We are not in a centralised programme so we didn’t have a single training session since the Olympics. We had our first session yesterday and tried to connect a little, get adjusted to each other.

“Also, Germany is getting much colder and there is the time difference but the guys managed extremely well and it was a typical German performance — good efficiency, high discipline. Some of the players have never played together before so it’s tough because you have to get used to a common tactic, specially with just two meetings and a training session to get there. I was hoping for such a performance but I am a little surprised how well that worked, to be honest.

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“But there is no denying that it is an experienced team because they have the experience from the German league and the Under-21,” a visibly happy Henning explained. 

Fulton, on the other hand, was honest enough to accept that his team played much below levels expected of them. “No excuses. We are at the end of a long season but they just flew in and we are at home. We missed a few connections upfront and were not too fluid, there was not much fire in the attack, we are normally a lot more threatening. I don’t like losing but it’s not the Olympics today and we are in a different phase,” Fulton admitted.

“It is always difficult when you are chasing the game, you need to keep the ball but also need to dominate the attack, we did that but with five min to go, we need to do that in the 1st half. I think we still created enough in the 2nd quarter but didn’t finish well enough, we weren’t on the mark today. It’s just one of those things and we start again tomorrow,” he hoped.