Hockey Passion Exclusive Impossible for Players to Work & Play International Hockey Given the Incredibly Packed Calendar: Shane McLeod

Shane McLeod is a much-respected international hockey coach. The 56-year-old former New Zealand international, who has attained phenomenal success as Belgium men’s team coach guiding the Red Lions to World Cup, Olympic, and European Championship glory in his first stint. Now in his second coaching stint with the Red Lions replacing Miguel Van Heuvel, Shane is bullish about driving Belgium men’s hockey forward. The ace coach was also at the helm of New Zealand men’s team at the 2008 and 2012 Olympics. The 2017 and 2018 FIH Coach of the Year winner spoke to Hockey Passion in an exclusive interview, sharing his perspectives on how he intends to map the Red Lions’ journey leading up to the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.

Excerpts:

This is your second coaching stint with the Belgium men’s hockey team – your first coaching stint was a highly memorable one – the national team won the Olympic, World Cup and the European Championship. What are your ambitions in your second stint with the Red Lions?

There are three ambitions that we’re concentrating on. The first one is to get the high performance program going as well as possible – we are giving ourselves a year to try and do that. We’re onboarding a whole lot of new players that haven’t necessarily had a lot of international hockey before. It’s about teaching them all the things around high performance, nutrition, lifestyle, and the ins & outs of what international hockey is all about.

The second ambition is to getting a team ready for the 2026 World Cup, – we’ve some quite big ambitions to perform well there. We’ve witnessed some quite good signs from the young players – they have some capabilities, but there’s a little bit of inconsistency that comes you know with youth. We would be using the 2025 European Championship as a ‘bit of a guide’ as to where we’re sitting in world hockey. Finally, the third ambition is around high performance when we’ll be really trying to shift through the gears as quickly as we can to readying a team for the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.

Belgium side is passing through a bit of transition with several biggies – John-John Dohmen, Felix Denayer, Loick Luepaert, Florent Van Aubel, and Cedric Charlier announcing their international retirements after the 2024 Paris Olympics – So how you have been navigating this transition phase?

It’s a really interesting process – something quite a few teams are going through. Such a transition process actually allows you to get four years better than you were four years ago. If we had a look at the Paris Olympics (for example), and what we want to achieve in Los Angeles Olympics, there has to be four years of growth. You actually need new players with new skills, new enthusiasm, guys who can come in, try, and take the team to the next level.

Belgium have been lucky in the fact that they’ve had a generation that didn’t really have to rebuild often. And now we’re seeing some space. We’re really impressed with how some of our young players are filling up that space and in in a way, you should see a slightly new direction with Belgium hockey over the next two-four years.

Belgium are placed 2nd in points table in the 2024-25 Pro League – barring your 1-3 loss to Australia the Red Lions had a great run – your thoughts on the Red Lions’ performance?

I reckon we needed to have a performance like that against Australia (1-3 defeat) because if everything comes too easy, you don’t understand what’s required. In top international hockey, if you’re 5-10% off your A game, most teams in the world top-10 can beat you. Australia played pretty well in that game. Having said that, I’m pleased with the reaction of the players – the way they fought back in the second half and created opportunities although it just wasn’t enough. There’s a lot of good learning in that. The Pro League provides team with the opportunity to play games of consequence and also learn when games don’t develop exactly how you want them to develop. That’s the stuff that is very difficult to buy for teams as you have to go through those experiences to emerge better.

Defending Olympic champions Belgium were shunted out in the quarterfinals at the 2024 Paris Olympics – at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics current Olympic champions Netherlands were shown the exit door in the quarterfinals. What’s your take on the world hockey order?

It’s all small margins. I find extremely interesting at the moment is the processes teams are going through at the moment and some of those processes means that they should be slightly ahead of others. A good example is Spain who have quite a complete team. I don’t think they’ve had to go through the same sort of process that, let’s say, the Netherlands, Belgium or Germany are going through or even Australia, with a whole lot of new players. They’ve had a bunch of talented young players that have been in and around the program for a while. I think Spain are a little bit ahead of some of those other nations and they’re playing pretty well at the moment. But I do see some big opportunities for the likes of the Netherlands, Australia, Belgium, and Germany because they can bring some new players who are going to bring some new excitement to international hockey.

India’s kind of a little bit of a mix in between the two and appear relatively well settled. There have some quite talented youngsters who if they make it to the Indian team, could make a difference. And then you’ve England that are battling away quite well at the moment but I don’t think they have the same depth of talent as some of the other nations. These are top six nations out there and to be fair, I don’t see much else coming from other areas at the moment.

The Hockey Indian League was very positive for both India and its players as well as for those players that went there. All in all, the competition is strong. I think the winning of medals is going to be really what happens in the next one to two years with how players are developed.

It is observed that teams across the globe are finding to tougher to score off penalty corners via their drag-flickers – the conversion percentage has come down – we saw at the Paris Olympics – how do you think teams need to strategise to profit from shorties?

Well, the biggest improvement area is the first runner – every nation has a solid first-rusher – Australia have Tim Brand, India have Amit Rohidas – he is actually one of the best in the world. Teams have to be a bit more creative and need to beat the first runner as their first priority before they can even get at the goalkeepers. Over the next few years, you will see another addition to how teams are trying to score off penalty corners. Maybe there’ll be some more variations – maybe you will need to have two very strong recognized drag-flickers at the top of the circle just to get a little bit of space and some opportunities to get at the goalkeepers.

There is a lot of talk about making face masks mandatory for defender during PC routines – your views?

I’ve never really been involved with anyone that’s been badly hurt in all my years with short corners but there is a high degree of danger as well. World hockey have incredibly skillful people that are well trained in executing a penalty corner and then you also have defenders that recognise that risk and they never seem to put themselves into danger certainly, not on purpose.

It’s an interesting aspect of our game that I don’t think we would like to have PC out of our game because people do enjoy watching penalty corners. But, we have to be mindful of safety and do everything in our power to make sure that it’s as safe as possible. There are some other elements of our game that I think are probably as dangerous like the reverse hitting and things like that. It’s just about where do you start and where do you stop? and that’s something that’s not in my power to decide. But we need to keep the short corner and the integrity of our corner as part of the charm of our game.

You have achieved so much coaching success for international teams as well as for clubs – how different is it coaching national sides and club teams?

There are a lot more similarities than differences. In both of them, you’re working very hard to try and get the very best out of the athlete and trying to take the athlete to a place that they can’t quite get to themselves. And that happens often in tournaments, but also in your daily training environment – you’re constantly working with players, trying to encourage them to be better than they were the day before. What happens in a club environment is you have that weekly game. So, you’re more on a routine. So you know what your Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday (17:53) and Friday look like. And it’s all a function of getting a team ready for the Sunday. So that’s more constant.

Imagine that you’re studying for a test, or a big exam. International hockey is a bit like getting ready for that exam. You study incredibly hard in the weeks prior to that exam so that you’re at your very best for that exam. What a club competition is, constant attending school and lessons and learning every day & every week. By the time you play your game, or you have little tests that you’re ready for those little tests. So that’s probably the biggest difference.

The job of an international coach is never easy – what are the biggest challenges?

The way incredibly packed the international calendar is, it is all about what you want from the athlete, how you want them to have a high performance life and also ensure they have as close to a normal balanced life as possible. One of the biggest challenges internationally is that an athlete is called upon constantly, the amount of games that an international athlete plays nowadays. It’s impossible nowadays to have players that work and play international hockey – you just can’t do it, you have to choose for that lifestyle and follow it. So that’s one of the biggest challenges is to try and create normality in a very abnormal environment.

Image Credit: FIH