When blue and white smoke, the colors of hockey club Pinoké, has cleared from a swirling Wagener stadium, the ball automatically goes to penalty corner specialist Alexander Hen-drickx at the exit of the first game in the semifinals of the play-offs between Pinoké and Amsterdam. (28). The Belgian is the boss at the back of ‘De Stitchneuzen’, as the debutant is nicknamed in the battle for the national championship.
Free defender Hendrickx takes the ball, finds a pass at his leisure and ‘scoops’ the ball dozens of meters through the air towards an attacker in a dark blue shirt. This pattern will repeat itself dozens of times on Sunday afternoon in Amstelveen. Every Pinoké attack starts with Hendrickx. His teammates seem instructed to mainly hand the ball to him.
That is quite strange at first glance. Anyone who observes Hendrickx during the warm-up mainly sees a massive player with a very nonchalant walk. One that doesn’t even try to turn on during the sprints before the race. He resembles the archetype of the ‘penalty corner specialist’: not the best hockey player on the team, but above all the cannon that can push the ball into the ropes.
But world and Olympic champion Hendrickx has developed enormously as a field player since he ended up with Pinoké in Amstelveen in 2019. Previously, he was mainly that clumsy defender with the pebble-hard penalty corner. now he is the man at the club in the Amsterdamse Bos. The leader of the defense and also still the cannon of the team.
Top scorer twice
“I sometimes call him the gorilla on top of the rock. He is now with us,” said Pinoké coach Jesse Mahieu (43). He understands that Hendrickx’s relaxed attitude takes some getting used to for an outsider. “He looks phlegmatic. But he really is a competitive player. When the whistle goes, he’s on. And when he has to, he often makes a corner.”
For the second season in a row, Hendrickx became the top scorer of the Dutch big league. He scored 25 goals (23 from a penalty corner and two from a penalty shot) in the hockey league known as the strongest in the world. Thanks in part to his goals and leadership, Pinoké qualified for the play-offs for the first time.
‘Jimi’ Hendrickx has been doing well for a few years now. When the Belgian hockey players took silver at the Rio Olympics in 2016, he was still a reserve player who had to sleep outside the Olympic village and did not play for a minute. After those Games, Hendrickx switched the switch. He decided to train even harder so that he would never be left out of the national team again.
Hendrickx made his final breakthrough at the 2018 World Cup in India. He did not start the tournament as the first cornerman, but ended with the Red Lions as world champion and became the top scorer with eight goals. Since then, he has been first choice at the head of the circle with the Belgians. At the Tokyo Games last summer, Belgium crowned itself Olympic champion for the first time. With Hendrickx in a monumental role, he scored fourteen times in eight games.
Drink as a treat
Sporting success has not changed Hendrickx, he says. “I’m still the same boy, have a chat with everyone. I just notice that I have a slightly different status as a hockey player. People are more likely to listen to me when I have something tactical to say.”
He also still treats his teammates to a gin and tonic when they ‘decorate’ a penalty corner for him. He’s been doing that for years. It should prevent players from going for their own success in the circle of the opponent. On Sunday, nineteen-year-old attacker Miles Bukkens forced two penalty corners with technical skills, good for two gin and tonics. Hendrickx’s appointment with his teammates shows the social intelligence of the jovial Belgian.
But what makes Hendrickx such a phenomenon at the head of the circle? „His push is difficult to read”, analyzes Pinoké coach Mahieu. “You don’t know if he’s going to push left or right. And the speed of his corner is unbelievable.”
During a penalty corner, the runners run at the risk of their own lives in the path of the shot, which reaches a speed of about 120 kilometers per hour. Hendrickx has one of the most important talents of a penalty corner specialist: a relatively short drag movement. The shorter the drag, the sooner the ball leaves the stick. Then the runners have less chance of successfully intercepting the ball.
On Sunday, it just won’t work with Hendrickx’s penalty corner in the duel between “David and Goliath”, as a Pinoké supporter describes the meeting. Apparently it still feels that way when Pinoké plays against neighbor and 21-time national champion Amsterdam.
But with 3 minutes and 25 seconds left on the stadium clock, Pinoké gets another penalty corner when trailing 2-1 – the seventh of the game. All eyes are on Hendrickx, who sees his push reversed by Amsterdam keeper Joren Romijn. But in the second rebound, German Niklas Wellen equalized. And in the series of shoot-outs, when Pinoké decides the game in his favor, the supporters jump over the fence to start a party on the pitch. A rare scene on the Dutch fields.
It promises a lot for next Saturday, when Pinoké plays a home game in the play-offs for the first time in the shadow of the Wagener Stadium. A good time for Hendrickx to make a few penalty corners.
A version of this article also appeared in the newspaper of 17 May 2022
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