A good coach never screams from sidelines: Clarence Lobo

Clarence Lobo

Hockey coach Clarence Lobo is not one to shout himself hoarse from the sidelines - be it on the hockey turf during his 25-year coaching stint, or off it. Lobo, 58, is the only Mumbaikar in the list of four Dronacharya awardees in the Lifetime category to be felicitated by president Ram Nath Kovind at the Rastrapati Bhawan on September 25. The other three are Tarak Sinha (cricket), Jiwan Kumar Sharma (judo) and V R Beedu (athletics).

It began in 1993
Lobo's coaching journey began in 1993 with his employers Tata Sports Club, following which he coached the Mumbai, Maharashtra, sub-junior India, junior India and senior India teams.

Foreign flavour
"The senior stint under chief coaches Jose Brasa and Michael Nobbs were most special. Besides hockey, they taught me life lessons. While Brasa would relentlessly hammer the same exercise till the boys got it right, Nobbs was an astute tactician, just like Ric Charlesworth under whom I worked for Mumbai Magicians [Hockey India League franchise]. None of them ever screamed from the sidelines.

In today's highly competitive professional sporting world, the right way to get your point across to a player at a match is during the break. While the game is on, no player is in a position to listen to you, and if he does, he takes his focus off the game for that moment which could prove costly," explained Lobo, who works for Tata Power as a senior technician in their Matunga office. He coaches the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) team at national-level tournaments and Maharashtra State Police on the local front.

London 2012, a low point
While some of the highlights of Lobo's coaching career include a gold medal at the 2010 Sultan Azlan Shah tournament in Malaysia, silver at the 2010 New Delhi Commonwealth Games and gold at the Asian Champions Trophy in China in 2011, there is one failure that still hurts. "The bottom-place finish at the 2012 London Olympics was painful. I believe we played so many matches in the run-up to those Games that the boys were tired by the time we reached London," revealed Lobo, who takes pride in being a players coach.

"Some big names like Sardar Singh, Sandeep Singh and goalkeeper PR Sreejesh began their careers under me at the junior level. I also have a great friend and confidante in Dhanraj Pillay. He says that a coach should always be close to his players, like an elder brother or a father figure, because only then can he expect his boys to work their backsides off for him.

Coach-player relationship
"That's the reason I have thousands of friends in the hockey fraternity and no enemies," said Lobo, who now has the arduous task of replying to over 2000-odd congratulatory Whatsapp messages that flooded his mobile as soon as the Sports Ministry confirmed his award on Sunday.

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