Goalkeeper’s clinic best thing for local hockey – Fernandes

The 13th Annual Diamond Mineral Water Indoor Hockey Festival concluded on Sunday with Guyana’s Pepsi Hikers winning for the seventh time in the Men’s division and their female counterparts, Woodpecker Hikers going down fighting in their final. However, at the conclusion of the tournament, Head Coach of Guyana’s Hockey team, Robert Fernandes has expressed his view that the goal keeper’s clinic held prior to the start of the tournament was “Probably the best thing in recent years to happen to hockey in Guyana.”

Before the tournament began, Canadian national goal keeper, Shankar Premakanthan had hosted a four day camp where the local goal keepers benefited from his (Premakanthan) teachings and drills of which he had acquired in his 20-year long career as a goal keeper.
“A goal keeping clinic was probably the best thing that could happen to hockey in Guyana.” Fernandes said as he explained the strategic move to help lift what was lacking in Guyana’s hockey.
Fernandes highlighted the fact that “We [Guyana] have consistently put out exceptional national teams but our goal keeping wasn’t up to par, so we would match them in our outfield play but would struggle in penalty corners and so forth and we lost a lot of games we should have won because our goal keeping was not up to par.”
However, there could be a change in the winds for the local side as there has been positives from, the clinic as it can be seen, according to Fernandes that “in just from the four days of training with Premakanthan the level of goal keeping has advanced tremendously.”
Premakanthan, at the end of the clinic had assessed the participants and said that “based on what I would have seen I was very impressed by some of the local keepers especially in their athleticism and am confident that they will excel as they grow.”
This had made Fernandes confident of the future of the sport as the highpoint of the training was that that it attracted a significant number of goalkeepers who were below the age of 20 years.
“What is really good is that a bunch of the goal keepers are 20 years old and younger so to get that kind of exposure and knowledge at this age can go well for the future of our goal keepers.” Fernandes mentioned.
The coach went on to add that this will do well for the future of Guyana’s national side and will definitely come in handy when the team participate in the annual Pan American Games next year.