The skipper of the national hockey team, Salya Nsalbini, says Ghana’s failure to have a long-term plan for major tournaments is undermining her quest to break the jinx of South Africa and Egypt and qualify for the World Cup and Olympic Games.

“We fail to meet our goal of winning major tournaments because we do not plan long-term. We always focus on short-term preparations. If we want to beat South Africa and Egypt as has become our dream, then we have to set long-term goals by building strong U-17 and U-21 national teams to feed the senior team as it happened when I started playing hockey almost 20 years ago,” Nsalbini stated in an exclusive interview with The Mirror.

“We have always been going along with short-term measures in preparation for major tournaments, depending on the availability of funds. Anytime we return from tournaments, training among players ceases until another tournament is being organised.

The way forward is that we should have long-term plans which have been working for many of our African and European rivals,” he said.

“What I have noticed is that, prior to major tournaments, we are not even certain whether we will participate or not. We are also not certain about sponsorship for the tournament and all these put us in a state of uncertainty and undermine our preparations and focus,“ he noted.

Nsalbini also expressed concern about the failure of government and the corporate world to invest in hockey with the view to offer players more exposure to be competitive in international tournaments.

“The national senior hockey team have no opportunity to be regularly exposed to play competitively, especially in FIH-sanctioned matches. This is because the government and the corporate world do not offer the necessary sponsorship as has been happening in South Africa and Egypt.

“However, in hockey, the more players are exposed to regular playing time against skillful opponents, the more they learn and develop their strategies, skills and tactics.

“Anytime we play more opponents before major tournaments, we improve very well because we acquire new tactics, skills and strategies,” he explained.

On the way forward, Nsalbini said, “We go into tournaments with the intention of winning but we should always have a long-term plan to do so. Without it, Ghana will always play second fiddle to South Africa and Egypt, and this will deny us the opportunity to fly the flag of Ghana high during major tournaments.”

“If we want to break the jinx over South Africa and Egypt, we also need to rebrand hockey in terms of how we play our league games.
“When I started playing hockey, there were many participating teams but now most of the teams have faded out, leaving just a few.

The indication is that we now have a smaller pool of players in the Ghana Hockey League, out of which players are selected to play in the various national teams.
“With barely five teams playing in the league, each team play only eight matches for the entire season. In terms of competition, we are handicapped because of the lack of playing time for our players, so how can we prepare quality local players to overpower our rivals who do not only get more exposure before competitions but also have more playing time at the local level? Nsalbini questioned.