Hockey with Casey Eastham

Just when the women’s hockey world thought it was safe to strut back on the turf following the retirement of veteran Australian star striker Nikki Hudson, along comes Casey Eastham.

“At training, we attackers like setting up intercept situations.". Images: Theron Kirkman

A major concern for the Hockeyroos’ rivals is that 20-year-old Eastham already knows what cutthroat international hockey is all about. Intimidation will prove futile – the mid-fielder has quickly chalked-up 40-plus appearances for the national side.With Hudson the last of the “golden era” squad of the 1990s and 2000s which collected two Olympic Gold, two Commonwealth Gold, two World Cups and six Champions Trophies, the pressure’s on Eastham and her fellow youngsters to drag our girls out of the international hockey mire. Currently ranked fifth, their lowest standing in 25 years, the Hockeyroos face their biggest assignment since Beijing in the form of the coveted Women’s Champions Trophy to be played at Sydney’s Olympic Park Hockey Centre between 11-19 July.Eastham and her Hockeyroos team-mates are keen to step out of the shadow of the past era of national success and begin the next Olympic cycle in their long march towards London 2012 glory under coach Frank Murray – himself working in the holy shadow of another Australian hockey doyen, former master mentor Rick Charlesworth.Based in Perth with the Hockeyroos on a routine six-month AIS scholarship, the Illawarra local’s quick between the ears, quick between the sidelines and her maturity has lead to Murray outing her as the future of women’s hockey, claiming she has the potential to one day develop into the world’s best women’s player.The youngest member of the national squad recently let Inside Sport in on the secrets to her success. We left realising why the opposition’s “Farewell Nikki” party is well and truly over.

TURF WARS

“Here in Perth a lot of our training is based on getting the most out of the turf playing surface. Each session [6am-8am every second day] we’ll do what’s called a flow-through drill. It’s a whole-field drill involving build-up play from one end of the field to the other, and then back the other way. It’s one person on the ball in and out of cones. You might do overheads and things like that in the middle of the field, but it’s only involving the person on the ball and the person who’s going to receive it. Then it gets moved on down the field onto the next two.

“That lasts about 15-20 minutes before we split into groups – attackers down one end and defenders down the other. Defenders usually work on hitting over longer distances and attackers more on build-up play from the 25/50, into the circle. Sometimes we shorten it up and just do circle work – short, sharp stuff. We’ll also slog it out in a 10-15-minute game somewhere in there as well.”

WELL-POSITIONED

“At training, we attackers like setting up intercept situations. We try to create game-like scenarios – a defender hitting out and we’re making the intercept and going at the defence as quickly as possible, just to get them on the back foot.“We have principles we work on as well in terms of getting in the right lines and getting out of the lines of the defenders. We take all the principles we’ve learned and combine them. We’ve also been working on presenting and getting the ball off our players. That’s what coach Frank Murray is pushing this year because we’ve always struggled in terms of getting the ball off our players … we’re not too bad at intercepts and those sorts of things. Improving on that linking between the passer and the receiver is a big target for us this year.“All our stick and ball sessions are quite similar, even though they feature different drills, but they’re all based on the same principles: taking the game on, not being so conservative, attackers getting at the defence and defenders hitting through lines and looking for that riskier pass for the bigger reward. All those concepts are put into training and the drills are adjusted accordingly.”