Ireland win battle of minds with Canada
The Canadians’ bold move - taking off goalie Mike Mahood and playing with 11 outfield players - might have worked in the past, but the Irish players have been taking lessons in how not to get fazed by such moves.
Psychologist Phil Moore has been working with the Irish team to get them to cope with all sorts of extraordinary circumstances and, according to midfielder Stephen Butler, his efforts came to fruition here yesterday.
“I’d never seen anything like that in my hockey career,” Butler said afterwards, “but you could see they were trying to rattle and unsettle us. Quite honestly, the work Phil has been doing with us, has prepared us to cope with all sorts of eventualities and this was definitely one of them.”
Despite the fact that Canada, by rule, still had to play one man in their own half, the move was clearly designed to baffle the Irish and confuse them into making an error which could have resulted in them conceding a late equaliser, but they did not let it get to them, as Canada coach Gene Muller admitted.
“That was something you might have seen when my dad was playing,” Butler said, “but we were able to re-focus and not do anything stupid. It was one of those unexpected things Phil had coached us to cope with and we did, so we’re delighted with that and it has proven again the value of the work he does.”
The scorer of the first Irish goal admitted that the Irish had had to put the 5-1 defeat by England on Wednesday behind them if they were to get the necessary win against Canada and they were able to do that because of the way they had planned their campaign.
“We had worked the tournament out into phases and as we are going to play at least six games, we divided them into three phases.
“The aim of the first phase was to have three points in the bag and that’s how it has turned out. Now we move on to the next phase and that begins with the game against Belgium on Saturday,” he said.
Irish coach Dave Passmore said that Canada, due to the ice hockey background of many of their players, were always going to be a physical side, but the Irish game plan had been to move them around the pitch and try and lessen their ferocity.
“We wanted to play into wide channels and pressure them at the back and by and large we did. That prevented them playing the patterns they wanted to play. We created much more chances than they did and the scoreline might have been more in our favour, but things don’t always go the way you want.”
In terms of Canada’s late move to take their goalie off, Passmore said the Irish team had worked hard with the psychologist to deal with things like that and he was pleased they did not let it get to them.
“I don’t think it did us any harm, but it was important that we didn’t get involved when there was argy bargy over whether their extra player should wear a goalie’s helmet. It was a distraction, but we didn’t let it distract us. I didn’t get involved myself, because I knew that, like what happens in soccer, if you lose it on the sideline, you lose it on the pitch.”
For his part, Butler said that the team’s work with Phil Moore was aimed at making them better players in a tournament situation and he felt that work was now paying dividends.
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