THS was contacted by Alan Sinclair, the head National coach of the Oman Hockey Association. He thought we might be able to help get the word out there about our crazy game taking place in the middle east!

The Middle East …. not a gun or bomb or Al Qaeda or Taliban in site.. Not even a wayward Jew and surprisingly not even any resentment or persecution of we so called Christians. Lots of goats, camels and donkeys though… and maniacal car drivers.

No women playing Hockey, no partially clad beach babes, no cold wintery Victorian summers either. Just a lot of dust and sand and heat and flies and men wearing dresses and women being coyly hidden behind unfashionably uncomfortably hot black sheets. Sounds like a few Hockey carnivals I went to in New South Wales and Queensland way back when there were no plastic Hockey balls and for that matter no plastic fields either. And for the intrepid few like me some reasonably good waves to surf.

And there is Hockey. In fact Omanis played Hockey before we Aussies did. Seems when the sailing ships of the British fleets needed a place to get their crews suntanned and fit they stopped off here for a few weeks and began playing Cricket and Hockey to fill in time. Then the Indian labour that makes up over 30% of the population had a little input into the scene a while later. Also Oman used to own half of what is now Afghanistan and Pakistan and there was a great deal of fraternisation between the two continents… so much that there is a recognised tribe here called Balushis that are part Arab and part Pakistani.

So with this influence why does an aging overweight and aggressively competitive has-been want to try to teach them the gospel of Hockey Aussie style? I have often wondered that myself. But what I do know is that these people are superb athletes and willing learners .. if they are allowed to sleep between the hours of 10.00am and 5.00pm. and play all night. Must be something to do with the 45deg temperatures we have right now.

The Hockey??? Well I remember playing a team called Waratahs from near Murwillumbah in New South Wales when I was in my formative years and all of them basically came from the same family and lived on sugar cane farms. Strong arms and thick heads and Hockey sticks that were extensions of their tools of trade. In fact I think some of them used their sticks to cut the cane. So the Hockey was pretty agricultural.Not much difference here. Each street will field a Football team or Hockey team and they get their practice beating the life (could have used a more descriptive word of course) out of anything that moves. In fact I got this job because an assistant coach in the National programme beat the life (almost) out of an umpire and promptly got the sack and 6 weeks in a not very nice holiday camp. Another National player got life from international Hockey for taking to an opponent with his stick in front of the TV cameras and over 800million people saw it. I had to act as an interpreter at the hearing and told the judiciary to give him 50 lashes as well. Fortunately I was not the National Coach then just a lowly goalkeeper coach.

Fortunately (or unfortunately if you are crazy like me) we ex-pats cannot play the game here as it for Omanis only .. except if you come from Pakistan or India and get paid to play like the big boys do in the rest of the world. Each team is allowed 2 of these mercenaries and it spoils the fun as these people can mostly play Hockey but only by themselves. I think you know what I mean there. So it is quite incestuous and with only 15 clubs in the whole country the talent pickings may seem quite slim. This is actually not the case. As I said earlier the talent is here but they need more international competition to bring it out. As well as a better local coaching program of course.

However we have managed to do some interesting things… Our U/21 National Team won a major tournament a few months back … Got us to the Junior Asia Cup and maybe with a chance to the Junior World Cup if we get a reasonable placing. In doing this we drew with Chinese Taipei and then defeated China U/21 twice. We beat them the first time 4 – 1 in the pool game and in the final 3 -2 in extra time and it was like we had won the football world cup. We each even got presented with a nice fat cheque from the Ministry of Sport.

Anyway if you really want a story maybe you could take a little excursion over here or get to Singapore in June where our Senior team will be playing in the Asia Hockey Federation Cup or Hyderabad in July where our U/21 team (take out 3 players from Seniors and add 3 younguns) will be trying very hard to qualify for the Junior World Cup!

Cheers.

Related posts:

1. Victorian U21 Women
2. Charlesworth to coach Kookaburras & Murray reappointed to Hockeyroos
3. Andrew Smith, Joseph Stalin and skin-coloured Bike Shorts.
4. VIPERISED.
5. What went wrong?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 13th, 2008 at 3:47 pm and is filed under Bryan. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.