Nobbs looks at positives from dismal European Tour, says tour helped them spot the grey areas

India’s hockey coach Michael Nobbs said on Saturday that the team’s poor performance during its European tour was just a learning process ahead of the 2012 London Olympic Games that starts next week. According to a report in The Hindu, Nobbs admitted that the Indian team failed to find the desired results during the tour of France and Spain but it has helped them to spot the grey areas.

“Well, don’t go by the results, we used this tour as a learning process. It was like find and fix exercise. Tried to find out what are our grey areas and what are the things we need to do,” said Nobbs during the welcome ceremony for the team at the Games Village.

“We used all the players in these matches (Test series against Spain and South Africa and in tri-series). Except South Africa, other teams Spain and England are much higher ranked then us. The tour taught us the importance of playing against strong teams,” the Australian said.

Meanwhile a report in The Times Of India quotes Nobbs saying that the blue turf is no match to the traditional green pitch and all the teams will face difficulties in adjusting to the surface.

"During the tour (of Spain) we played on blue turf and let me tell you some interesting facts have come up. None of the teams we played during the tour could convert most of the penalty corners (including ourselves). We could convert only three of the 33 penalty corners. The turf is made by the same company with same colour but it played differently at different places. Each turf has different characteristics depending on the climatic conditions," Nobbs said, adding in France India played on green turf which was fast while blue turf was slow and bouncy.

“I don't know why this turf has been introduced. I can only guess that blue being one of the Olympic colour, they have introduced it (in London Olympics)," Nobbs added.