Hockey has a mixed bag in Scotland.  It is one of our most popular sports, certainly with regards to playing numbers, let its stars are little known.  The average person on the street could tell you the name of the Scotland football coach or the rugby captain, but could they tell you the same people in hockey terms?

It is also one of very few sports in Scotland and Britain which truly transcends the gender barrier.  There is no sexual preference or discrimination, which is often a problem in larger sports like football or rugby.  The men’s and women’s game are enjoyed and respected in equal measure.  And never has this been more apparent than today.  Just ask Scotland’s most famous hockey couple, Mathias and Susan Ahrens. 

Mathias, from Germany, is the head coach of the Scotland men’s team.  His new wife, Susan (formerly Susan Gilmour) is one of Scotland’s greatest hockey players, playing over 160 times for her country.  She now coaches at both club and international level, and is a High Performance Coach at the Glasgow School of Sport.

And this is an important and busy year for the pair, with much coaching, mentoring and scouting to be done.  Springtime witnessed an innovative new tournament called the Super Six, where the Britain’s best players were pitted against each other in a bid to make the GB squad for the Beijing Olympics.  Of the six, two male and two female teams were all Scottish, so there was plenty of talent on display.

Meanwhile this month sees the Euro-Hockey Youth Nations Championship held in Edinburgh where Scotland’s young pretenders will be staking their claim for places in the senior squads for years to come, including London 2012 and Glasgow 2014.  And in August the senior men’s and women’s sides will travel to Lisbon and Lithuania respectively to compete in the vital Euro Trophy tournament.

So, with so much going on, In The Winning Zone took the opportunity to sit down with Mr & Mrs Scottish Hockey to chat about how they felt the sport was doing, and where it needs to go from here.  After all, as two former professionals, they ought to know how to ramp things up in Scotland.

Mathias joined up with Scottish Hockey in 2000, and was their first full time recruit.  He believes that even in that short space of time, the game has improved dramatically.  “I think there was a big change, and it is still happening.  Everyone wants to get out on the pitch and win, and try hard. 

“What has changed is that we are pushing everyone a bit more out of their comfort zone, and stopped them being comfortable in their comfort zone.  So instead of just saying ‘we can beat anyone’, we actually do go out there and beat them, and be competitive.”

Mathias is also a great believer in the principles of Yehuda Shinar, the Israeli sports consultant who developed a proven formula to winning, and has worked with, amongst others, Clive Woodward’s World Cup winning England rugby team and the record breaking Scottish Commonwealth Games swimming team. 

“We use the winning concept from Yehuda Shinar.  The ‘Warrior’ concept.  We have worked on this for nearly two years now and we have brought a lot of these ideas into team selection.  We select teams much more now based on the warrior principles.”

The warrior principles of which Mathias speaks form the cornerstone of Shinar’s theory, that to be a winner, you must be a warrior.  You must have the mentality and ability to dig in and fight when it is required of you.  If you have a team of warriors, you have a team that will never lie down and be beaten. 

“We also embrace the TCUP concept,” Mathias continued.  This is the second ingredient in Shinar’s winning recipe: Thinking Correctly Under Pressure.  This includes ideas as simple as avoiding getting trapped in unnecessary corners, patience in creating opportunities and maintaining self control.  “I think in hockey you have lots of pressing situations – the beginning and ending of games and penalty corners.  If the team scores a goal there needs to be an immediate reaction.  There are lots of situations where you have to use these approaches.”

And it appears to be paying off.  As far as the men’s team goes, Mathias believes they are true competitors on the European stage.  “We are strong in Europe.  We play pretty comfortably against France, we struggle maybe against Germany and Holland, who are one and two in the world, but Belgium are number four, and we are very close to them.

“Though at the moment we are very much in the second league of international hockey, and to get to the first we must win back-to-back in tournament hockey.  Tournament hockey is about winning two games in row.  Then the next step is doing this against better opposition.  We have to go to Asia, we have to go to Australia, just to widen the opportunities of our hockey style.”

This is the key to the further development, Mathias believes.  There is not a high enough level of competition in Scotland and the UK, so it is difficult for players to make the step up from amateur club hockey one week to world class international hockey the next.  They need to become accustomed to playing at a greater intensity against top quality opposition.

If anyone should know this to be true, it is Susan Ahrens.  She played the game at the top club level in Australia, Germany and the Netherlands – the three strongest hockey nations in the world, becoming the only Scot to win a European Cup Winners Cup in the process with the Rottweiss club in Cologne.  And it improved her international standing with Scotland considerably.

“I took an opportunity to go abroad.  I moved to Holland and played for one of the top Dutch teams for a season, which led up to the World Cup, which was held there in 1998.
It was perfect preparation.  Suddenly I became a full time athlete, playing at the highest level over there.  It was a brilliant year.”

Mathias feels very strongly that this is the way forward for Scottish players.  Susan is prime example.  We have seen what playing at a higher standard has done for the likes of Sean Lamont and Jason White on the rugby pitch, so why not translate this to hockey?

The men’s coach believes that if Scotland were to implement this plan, it is best to start with younger players.  “You have to have youth competition at a high level, and they miss out on it here, so what we will hopefully be able to do is send players away to other countries to play, but still remain supervised.  This way they are in an environment that they can still be coached from Scotland.  That is the way forward to get these young players to a high level of performance.”

And speaking of performance, where do the happy couple stand on the difference between performance and winning?  They seem to agree on most things, but in hockey terms, which is most important?

“I’d have to say performance,” exclaims Susan.  “Certainly at the Glasgow School of Sport level it is, but I also assist Keith Joss with the women’s team.  Playing against Ireland last month, we played a boring half court game, but we got the result.  So it’s not necessarily about playing a pretty game, it is about playing a system that works in order to get the result.”

But, uh-oh, trouble in paradise.  Mr Ahrens disagrees.  “I think winning is more important, because results create confidence, and confidence creates performance.  So I think leaving the result out of it creates a big problem, and it is something I always try to change.

“In the end it is pretty nice playing a good game, but it is completely different to produce a result.  I don’t think you can separate these two things.  You should always take them together, and a performance should create a result.”

The Scotland football team’s much vaunted win against France last year is a perfect point in case, as we discuss.  They won, but they did so playing poorly.  Not that this is necessarily a bad thing, backing up Mathias’s point.

“Winning without playing well, in football or hockey, is a great skill, because you are able to produce a result.  Rather than saying ‘Great play, but we lost 2-0.”

Susan is coming round to his way of thinking.  “How often in Scotland do we say the team played brilliantly and ran for 90 minutes, but we lost that vital goal?  I think it is a very Scottish trait.  We are quite happy to run all day, feel that we have done a hard shift and say we were unlucky.”

Professional attitudes from two true professionals, who are taking an amateur sport to bigger and better places in Scotland.  And if the performances and results can back this up, don’t be surprised if hockey starts picking up a few more column inches in the months to come.

RO

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CONGRATULATIONS TO MATHIAS AND SUSAN WHO HAVE JUST HAD A BABY BOY.  EVERYONE SAY HI TO LEWIS AHRENS!!