Paris: The last couple of weeks have been such a haze that Craig Fulton doesn’t even remember in which match India were down to 10 players for the most part. In the next morning of it all settling, however, the South African woke up happy. “Nice to wake up with a bronze medal for the boys,” he says.

In just over a year of taking charge of the Indian men’s hockey team that was hurting after a ninth-place finish at the 2023 World Cup at home, Fulton has got them back on the podium at the Paris Olympics. It wasn’t enough time, he says. Yet, through a system and style of hockey that was structured to be defensively sound on the field and shaped through hikes and adventure trips off it, he made it work.

In this interview, Fulton looks back at how, while also looking ahead.

Excerpts:

You spoke about India being the underdogs coming into the Olympics and few giving it a chance to medal after the Australia tour (5-0 defeat) and the Pro League. Was there belief in the camp?

One hundred percent. It’s not something that will fall in your lap, you’ve got to build it. That’s why I was so determined to go and play Australia. Unfortunately, they didn’t see the value of putting in video referrals because they were getting away with things you couldn’t at the Olympics. And it’s to their detriment. They won the games then. It was very difficult. We lost a lot of FIH ranking points in five games. But we just needed the games. We needed to build squad depth, so that if anyone gets injured, someone can cover. We did a good job in that department. Like you saw against... ah, whatever... when Amit (Rohidas) got his red card, Manny (Manpreet Singh) had to play at the back, we had Jonty (Jarmanpreet Singh) in midfield. We had all sorts of people all over. At the end of the day, I thought we did a good job of building the squad depth. For eight games, we had one red card and no injuries. That’s also a massive compliment to the staff and the way we set up the programme to get through.

You lay a lot of stress on trust within the group. You built it through unconventional ways for Indian hockey, like the Mike Horn camp before coming here. How did it help achieve what you did?

You can’t build a team on the field only. You can take it to a certain level of understanding of tactics and the way we try to play. But ultimately, everyone has tactics, everyone has systems. But humans implement the system. And if you don’t have a strong, high connection human to human, then your system is limited. So, the reason to do all the off- field stuff is to build the connection between human and human. Once you do that, and they actually buy into it, then every system is possible. And that’s what showed in the quarter-final (against Great Britain). And that’s what I’m most proud of.

Did you feel you had enough time to implement your ideas and style of hockey in this team when you came in?

No, it wasn’t enough time (smiles). But we got there in the end. Because, think about it, if you have four years from now into the next Olympics, what can we create with the same group. And it’s not necessarily going be a guarantee that you’re going to have success if you have time. The bottom line is what you do with the group you have, and how responsive they are to wanting to do it. I can set up everything, but if they don’t buy into it, then it’s never going to work. It’s obviously huge reliance on the leaders in the group to take it on and run with it.

And when did that happen with the leaders in this group?

I think it’s more about players getting to know and understanding what motivates them and what they actually want to achieve. The disappointment of the World Cup was there in everyone. It was, really. And they wanted to get back on the podium. As long as I understood that they really want to do that, then you can push them. Push them in a direction and show them that, “okay, if you want to do that, we can’t defend like this”. Once we got clarity on that, then the training began, and everyone understood that this is what we need to do. And then we need to get to a certain level of fitness. Because if we don’t, we can’t play this way. All of these things take time to put into place and prioritise. And then you’ve got to go and do it.

The team showed subtle changes in the kind of game styles and structures in some of the big games here. Adaptability was key too?

It’s massive. One way doesn’t cut it. You can’t play one way against every team. They’re too clever, there’s too much experience, and they can play around you. Once you know a team is playing one way, you spend two months working it out, and then you have a game plan for that team. So, that was one thing that came out of this.

Looking ahead, you spoke in the huddle about being humble, and that you wanted the medals above. How can you build towards that in the next Olympic cycle?

We’re going to reflect and see where we’re at right now. What we could’ve done better — that always comes out a bit later. We’ve got lots of smart people on the stats, how we’ve been playing and what actually happened. We created chances and we just couldn’t finish on the night of the semi-final. We’ve finished those chances before, but for whatever reason we couldn’t do it. And then to play the third-fourth (place) match is one of the hardest, because there is so much at stake. No one wants to finish fourth at the Olympics. We had a game plan. We wanted to have them come at us. Sometimes you’ve got to be careful what you wish for, because they had a few good chances! But I’m glad we stood tall and got the result. Because sometimes it’s not about the performance. It’s about the results in those games. We got the result, that’s what counts.

You touched upon the importance of the leadership group. With PR Sreejesh going and some others in the final leg of their careers, there could be a churn. What will be your focus areas in developing a new one?

We’ll go to ACT (Asian Champions Trophy) with a new-look team. We’ll have some from here and some from the U-21s and U-23s groups. And then we just continue the process. We’re looking for players that can bring a leadership style that... some are more vocal, some are quiet, they just lead by example. We need it all. So, we’re really on the lookout for new talents, and to bring it inside the group. And then, iron sharpens iron. That’s what we need to do. If we stay as we are now, I don’t think we’re guaranteed of anything.

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