Pick up your hockey sticks

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10 April 2012

Donning a nifty red skirt and sleeveless top, both emblazoned with the words "Great Britain", I already feel like a hockey champion.

After all, I used to play at school, some 15 years ago, and they say the body remembers something you learned when young. But one look at the GB hockey team's centre midfield, Helen Richardson, who has come along today to give me a bit of a masterclass, and I am not so self-assured.

She may be smaller and lighter than me, and have an easy, relaxed posture, but there is determination behind her smile.

We are at the Bisham Abbey National Sports Centre in Buckinghamshire, where the men and women's GB hockey teams train several times a week. Richardson begins by informing me that hockey has changed somewhat since I last picked up a stick. The offside rule (something I prided myself on actually understanding) has been eradicated and a new move has come in called the "shave" tackle.

"It's where somebody's running away from you and you're chasing, and you can sneak your stick in between their stick and the ball to shave the ball away from their stick," says Richardson.

It sounds decidedly underhand, I think, not suggesting that we try it. Instead we start with something simpler: shooting a goal. Richardson demonstrates first, dribbling the ball forwards as if it is actually attached to her stick, before coming down low and sweeping her stick around to slam the ball against the back of the goal. Despite trying embarrassingly hard, I can't seem to get a direct hit on the ball regardless of the fact that there is no goalkeeper, nor any defenders in my line of fire.

Next, we try a basic tackle. Not a big fan of confrontation, I run nervously towards Richardson, trying (and failing) to keep the ball close to my stick while also looking ahead. This is a drill we go through repeatedly but each time I end up smashing right into her, giving her possession of the ball.

Like a good student I watch carefully during spare moments as she plays skilfully with the ball, explaining that it is illegal to use the round side of the stick but you can use the flat side with the stick turned over.

Now this I can manage, along with the "flick", which involves pushing the ball, rather than hitting it, to another player.

"Any shape or size can play hockey but fundamentally you have to be extremely strong and exceptionally fit," she says.

"It helps if you are quick, which I'm not My strength is being quicker in my head - I read the game so I'm one step ahead in my mind."

After joining a local hockey club at the age of seven along with her three older brothers, Richardson played for her county, then for the Midlands, England Juniors and England Seniors. Now she hopes to make it into the 16-strong Olympic squad.

"We're on the pitch as a whole squad, five times a week for two hours each," she says. "Then we're in the gym three times a week, doing Olympic lifts, and then we also do extra speed sessions and, depending on the phase of the year, plyometric training and extra strength work. If you're injured you have to do extra rehab and physiotherapy and then there's eating, drinking" (I don't think she means beer) "and resting too."

I ask her if she ever gets fed up with her chosen career and wants to hide under the duvet in the morning.

"There are definitely times when it's hard," she nods. "Like if you're injured or you haven't trained very well for the last couple of weeks, but I think that's the thing that makes it so special when you can get somewhere, and do something amazing like win a medal. And having the London Olympics around the corner is a huge motivation because there are 11 other nations wanting that gold medal, and the only thing that we can do is keep trying to get better and hope that when it comes to it, it'll go right for us on the day."

But what about me? Should I be fast-tracking my hockey to London 2012? Richardson looks down for a moment, and then up at me with a smile: "From the little I've seen, in a word, no."

Pick up your hockey sticks

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