LAHORE: The Pakistan Hockey Federation (PHF) has reached a two-year contract with Dutch hockey expert Wouter Tazelaar to develop the basic structure of the academies to help revive the game.

This was stated by Secretary PHF, Muhammad Asif Bajwa, at a news conference here on Wednesday at the National Hockey Stadium along with the Dutch coach.

Bajwa said the step to hire the services of a foreign coach and expert aims at giving a fresh lease of life to hockey which was once a pride of Pakistan due to lots of achievements at the international level.

"It is unfortunate that our hockey standards have gone down in recent years and it is time to get into action to save hockey from complete destruction," he asserted.

The PHF official said the Dutch expert will be monitoring all the 11 academies which will be set up across the country and will start functioning from January 5, 2009.

"Besides Wouter will be grooming our coaches to help them become FIH certified educated coaches as we lack in the field of qualified coaching," he asserted.

Another important task which will be assigned to the foreign coach is to interact with the managements of senior and junior hockey teams for bringing improvement in the respective sides.

The 41-year Wouter a mid field player who represented Holland in three international matches in 1990 is an FIH qualified coach. He was flying to Holland last night (Wednesday) and will be returning Pakistan on January first next year.

He said the academies will be set up at Lahore, Peshawar, Karachi, Quetta, Bannu, Abbottabad, Hyderabad, Faisalabad, Sialkot, Bahawalpur and Gojra and in each institution 60 players of U14, 15, 16 will be inducted to learn hockey.