New Delhi: A week after being sacked, Indian men's hockey team's chief coach Michael Nobbs landed in India on Monday morning to settle dues with his employer Sports of Authority of India (SAI).
SAI, in consultation with Hockey India (HI), cited non-performance as the reason to remove Nobbs, who is the fourth foreign coach to be shown the door before the completion of his contract. Nobbs was contracted until the 2016 Rio Olympics, but has been asked to leave after spending just two years in the office.
The outgoing coach, however, narrated a different story and said that he hasn't been sacked but resigned willingly due to bad health. Clearly disturbed by how things are made to look, Nobbs said it's wrong to blame the coaches. "Do you really think with all the foreign coaches who have come here, all very successful before they came, that it's all the coaches' fault success hasn't come? Have a good look back over the last 30 years and tell me who is responsible?," the Australian told IBNLive.com.
When asked if SAI or HI talked to him before handing him the pink slip, pat came Nobbs's reply: "Nope." But he said there's still work left for him to do in the one-month notice period before flying back. "I still want to [do] some work there as I see the academies that companies are talking about as the fastest way to improve the base. The camps and team are the tip of the iceberg and not much will change unless the area underneath is really helped. We need more development in this area.
"I was shocked at how the Dutch system work. I already know [how] the Australian system work. They are so far ahead of India. It's going to take an enormous amount of work to catch up," he added.
Nobbs, however, said that the team has made progress over the last couple of years in terms of closing the gap when competing against top-ranked teams. "As a national team we have had reasonable results. In fact, when we lose, it's only by a goal or so. We have improved but so have other nations, i.e., Belgium [who beat Australia to win the FIH Hockey World League Round 3 in Rotterdam]."
Roelant Oltmans, who is currently HI's High Performance Director, has been asked to take over as chief coach of the team until the Asia Cup to be held in Ipoh, Malaysia, with MK Kaushik as the national coach.
HI secretary general Narinder Batra said that Nobbs will meet the SAI DG and catch up with the team before returning to Australia. "Nobbs is expected to meet the SAI DG later this week. He is also expected to meet all the players [at the national camp] in Bangalore," he said.
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