Bengaluru, 17 July 2019: Working with the two-time World Cup winner for Australia Fergus Kavanagh is a big step towards their preparations for the Olympic Qualification event in November feels experienced Indian Women’s Hockey Team defender Deep Grace Ekka.
Kavanagh who arrived in Bengaluru last week for the men’s special Defender’s Cap has stayed on for a week-long women’s special Defenders Camp where he will be working with Salima Tete, Deep Grace Ekka, Lilima Minz, Sushila Chanu Pukhrambam, Suman Devi Thoudam, Mahima Choudhary, Nisha, Gurjit Kaur, Rashmita Minz, Sunita Lakra, Manpreet Kaur, Nikki Pradhan, Karishma Yadav and Monika.
“These special camps have been very helpful for us. In December last year we had the legendary striker Glenn Turner work with us for a week where we worked on positioning inside the circle. I believe this helped us in our tournaments we played in the following months in Spain, Malaysia, Republic of Korea as well as the FIH Women’s Series Finals in Hiroshima,” explained Deep Grace Ekka who has 194 International Caps for India.
“At this Defender’s Camp Fergus is mainly focusing on tackling, man-to-man marking and most importantly how we as defenders need to keep the tempo up till the last hooter. Bringing players with such great experience like Fergus and Glenn Turner makes a lot of impact because they are still active in the sport and understand our shortcomings well,” Grace said.
The Indian Team will take part in the Olympic Test Event in Japan starting 17 August where they will play against China, Japan and Australia. India will hope to keep up their winning momentum after a successful outing at the FIH Women’s Series Final where they beat hosts Japan in the title round. “In the past months, our team has done well against Asian countries and we also tasted success against Spain, Ireland, Chile, Uruguay etc. It’s important for us now to do well against a much higher ranked team like Australia and the special Goalkeeper Camp and Defenders Camp will surely help in this pursuit,” she said.
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