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Allan Foti, Sports Correspondent
FORMER national team hockey player and head coach Collin “Porge” Williams believes that for the sport to regain its footing in the province and the country, it needs a rebirth beginning with the introduction of junior leagues and identification of development coaches.
A veteran of 107 national team matches, “Porge” said he had a vision for the sport that, alongside cricket, holds a huge place in his heart. The hockey legend said he had identified development from the bottom up as the only true solution to reviving the struggling discipline.
Williams told Sunday Life Sport that contrary to popular belief, even if funding was to become available immediately, the sport would still struggle to become competitive while clubs would have a near impossible task of raising teams due to poor numbers of players currently active enough to play in a competitive league.
“If there is one thing that needs to be done in hockey it’s to ensure that we increase our player base. And to achieve this we need to re-introduce hockey to the people via development policies. These policies must address grassroots development of both coaches and players because as we speak, we don’t have many qualified coaches or even just ex-players who might be able to coach. We also don’t have the players to enable us to run competitive clubs,” Williams revealed.
“We need to develop a strategy that will allow us to train coaches who will then go out there and start coaching young kids who will hopefully grow to become good players or at least offer us a big pool of players to choose from. We need to have players as young as six being introduced to the game and taught the basics,” he said.
He said he is pushing for the establishment of a junior league in the province to begin the development process. Williams and his wife Mandy last year held a coaching clinic that attracted 75 children of between the ages of six and 12 and he believes that more of such clinics will eventually benefit the sport.
“My vision is the establishment of a junior league where teams get to play maybe two or three games in a day may be on Friday evenings and Saturdays for a start. This will help us gauge their development while they are receiving coaching at their schools and also help us identify the special ones that we may need to keep our eye on for further development,” Williams said.
“My wife and I organised a clinic for the little ones and we managed to get about 75 kids to come through. We could have had better numbers and maybe even better players.”
Williams, whose two sons Sean and Matthew are also highly regarded for the hockey skills although Sean chose a cricket career over hockey, also revealed that there is a need for more national team engagements at senior level. He said this will help develop ambition in young players who will aspire to represent their country at the highest level if they are able to see the team play against some of the world’s top nations.
“When the senior national teams play competitive matches, they inspire the young players to want to reach the same level and play against the top teams like Australia for their own countries,” said Williams.
Williams also spoke about the need for the local game to move towards the modern style of play to make the locals more competitive internationally.
He said currently the Zimbabwean style is an old school running game whereas all the top nations in the world are beginning to follow the Australian way of playing hockey and favouring the passing game, which is what “Porge” hopes to introduce in the country.
@AllanFoti
Online Reporter