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Hi, I'm Adam. I'm the first team captain at East London Hockey Club. I've been playing
hockey for around twelve years.
I'm just going to talk a little bit about once you've developed the basic techniques,
how you can then take that to the next level and become a good team hockey player. So the
first thing to mention is that it's probably playing to your strengths, so it depends on
which position you're going to try and play in. If your particular strength is in stopping
the ball, you're very strong and you're very keen to getting the ball, then obviously,
defense may be the position for you.
If you're very quick, then your strength may lie as a forward. But no matter where you
play, one of the most important things in hockey is being fit, and hockey is a sport
where the ball is generally on the ground. So it's not like football where you're able
to declare the ball in the air a long distance and have a breather.
You need to be in space all the time. So being fit and having good stamina and being able
to work on short sprints is very important in hockey. Another important thing is tactical
awareness.
Working with your team, working with your coach, to develop a plan to know what the
people on your team are going to do. Hockey is very much a team sport, and even though
some players may be very good, they're often not going to win a game. The teams that will
win games will be teams that create space, that use their other players, that work the
ball around and make the ball do the work and create space to score the goal.
So those are the three things that you should develop. One, practicing good techniques and
using the correct methods to do things, two making sure that you're very fit, and that
you're able to get around the pit for a full seventy minutes, and three making sure that
you're working with your coaches and your teammates to develop a plan to know what you're
going to do and how you're going to face an opposition. It's not just a little bit of
a vital power, you can improve the game once you know the techniques, and you want to move
on to play for a team and to enhance to the next level. .