After losing 7-0 to Australia in the final of the 20222 Commonwealth Games (CWG) hockey event, head coach Graham Reid was very unhappy with his team, saying that they lacked a certain amount of energy required to beat a team with the calibre of Australia. Their drubbing at the hands of the defending champions ensured that they had to settle for a silver medal.
"There is a thing called energy and I don't think we had that today," Reid told PTI after the match. "When you play Australia this can happen sometimes. But I'm disappointed we didn't play well at all. We let ourselves down and all the things we talked about we didn't do. It's disappointing."
After their loss on Monday, August 8, India have now lost to Australia for the third time in the CWG final after New Delhi 2010 and Glasgow 2014. The thumping loss was also a reminder of India's 1-7 thrashing by the world's number one side in their pool match at the Tokyo Olympics last year, and Reid said perhaps they were intimidated by the atmosphere.
"We could not get pressure out of the ball today, we needed to do that. We talk about getting in front of the day. Pressure will always be there on the big stage. It's never away, who knows what history is in store, it's hard to gauge. I told them that the most important thing was to play our best and the result will look after itself. As I said we have got a lot of work to do." Reid said.
Himself being an Australian, Reid knows how tough it was to beat a team with the stature of Australia, “At the end, it boils down to winning the one-on-one battle and we didn't win that today. If you want to win a final, that's what you have to do. You have to win every single battle.”
