Hurley coach Enzo Torossi Maccia talks, but no one listens. The number last in the men’s hockey premier class has just been beaten on its own field by Pinoké: 1-8. It is Sunday afternoon, March 8, this year. Immediately after the match, the players and coaching staff of Hurley in Amsterdam dutifully stand together in a circle on the field.
In a soft voice, the Argentinian tries to give something to his men. No one responds, two players even look over their shoulders at the busy and sun-drenched terrace of the club where several women’s teams are already participating in the so-called the dansant have started. The pitchers of beer are passed from hand to hand.
Then goalkeeper Joren Romijn suddenly speaks. “Everyone has to think about what on earth happened here today and then ask themselves: what do I bring?! With what attitude and intention do I come to the club?” Suddenly there is full attention from everyone. The experienced goalie, who got down on one knee: “Because that’s the problem! We deliver too little, both in training and in matches.” One person nods in agreement. The rest remain silent, just like the coach.
The defeat against Pinoké is the provisional low point for Hurley. After fourteen league games they have one point. Even more worrying: there was hardly any fighting spirit. After seven minutes and two goals conceded, the match against Pinoké seemed to be over.
Romijn, who won the national title with Amsterdam as a starting player last season, can’t get his head around it. “Then you play at the highest level and then we put this on the mat,” he says afterwards NRCsucking on a water bottle. “It’s maddening.”
What effects does it have on players if the defeats are repeated? Does gaming still exist? And is it mentally possible to turn the tide? Romijn, with sweat coming from his bald scalp: “Good questions, but not for now.”
Goalkeeper Joren Romijn of hockey premier league Hurley is disappointed after conceding yet another goal.
Photo: Olivier Middendorp
National champion
More than two weeks later, after two more defeats, he nevertheless cheerfully walks into the building of his employer in Amsterdam. “Coffee?” he asks.
Via Castricum, Hurley, Qui Vive and Kampong he ended up at his dream club Amsterdam in 2021. At the somewhat declining top club and at the Dutch team, Romijn learned the laws of top sport: the mutual differences at the top are marginal, things can always be better and you have to be relaxed under pressure to really perform. “That was, at least for me, quite a difficult combination,” says Romijn.
He always had the feeling that the Amsterdam club management did not fully support him. Every year there were rumors that the club was looking for an even better foreign goalkeeper. It was eating away at him. Halfway through his fourth season, those persistent doubts turned out to be justified: his contract was not extended, it was announced. He was sick of it.
Until he gathered himself together after a few weeks and addressed himself and his teammates from Amsterdam. “I’m bummed like a bull, but I will do everything I can to become a champion.” The result: he played the best months of his career and won the first national title in thirteen years with Amsterdam. “Insane, especially after everything that had happened.”
But the number of places available for goalkeepers at the highest level is limited with only twelve clubs. And so in the summer of 2025, after years, he returned to his ‘childhood love’ Hurley, which had barely managed to survive in the premier class. “I knew it would be a completely different season.” Smiling: “But I had not anticipated this.”
Sleep medication
Bad luck, injuries to key players, but above all a lack of fighting spirit and quality broke Hurley down early in the season. The home match against Schaerweijde, a direct competitor in the fight against relegation, is illustrative. Hurley still lost, despite having a lead. Romijn: “Then we knew it would be a very difficult season.”
The persistent losses led to declining self-confidence of the team, a few big defeats and sometimes mutual irritations.
Myrthe van Kesteren (right) van Huizen in a duel with two players from HV De Terriërs from Heiloo, in the 2021/2022 season
ANP / Soenar Chamid sports photography
“I recognize all that,” says Myrthe van Kesteren. In the ’24/’25 season she was captain of Huizen Dames 1, which played in the main league for the first time after promotion. It became a disastrous year. Of the 22 league matches, they won one and drew three times. The other eighteen games were lost, often by large margins. “The atmosphere was mediocre and at times even grim at the end of the season.” There were several camps, various group apps and parents became increasingly involved in the team. Van Kesteren: “That didn’t help.”
The constant losses became increasingly apparent in her behavior, she says in her favorite coffee shop in Amsterdam. “I once addressed a teammate during a match in such a way that my brother and sister, who were standing on the sidelines, said to me afterwards: ‘That was not okay, Myrth’.”
To break the negative results, she trained even harder. “To the point of being forced.” It didn’t help. On the contrary. “Shortly after the winter break, I was taking sleeping medication as prescribed by my doctor.” The last league match ended in a 10-1 defeat. Only seven players showed up for the team’s season finale.
Flying to the throat
What happens, mentally and physically, persistent loss in sports? “A very interesting question,” says Nico van Yperen over a cup of coffee in the center of Groningen. He is the country’s only professor of sports psychology at the local university. “It is precisely that repetitive element of losing that makes it intriguing. But, as far as I know, no specific research has been done into this.”
The best lessons are often found in a loss, says Van Yperen. “Yet athletes and coaches often say: ‘Forget it quickly and move on.’ But that’s exactly what you shouldn’t do. You can learn more from mistakes than from success.”
You can learn more from mistakes than from success.
This is of course more difficult with an endless series of losses, says Van Yperen. “It often plays a role in the fact that the most important explanation is that the difference in quality of the players compared to the competition is simply too great. That does not have to be the case.”
Take football club RBC in the 2005/2006 Premier League season. According to experts and those involved, a team with Premier League worthy players. Yet they achieved the worst result ever by a football club at the highest level in the Netherlands: one win, six draws and 27 losses.
Paul de Lange of RBC in a duel with PSV player Ibrahim Afellay (right) in the dramatic 2005/2006 season for RBC.
ANP / ANP
“The problem was: we were not a team, but a team full of mercenaries, most of whom played for themselves,” says RBC midfielder Paul de Lange, looking back. An example, he says, was a free kick that RBC received in a promising position on the field in the away match against PSV. “I agreed with Edgar Marcelino that I would take it.” To his astonishment, De Lange saw how the Portuguese shot anyway, in an attempt to distinguish himself against the big PSV. “I wanted to go at his throat.”
The frustrations continued to increase as the season progressed, says De Lange during a break from his work as a house painter in Beverwijk. “We became cynical towards each other,” he says. He sighs. “Perhaps the biggest problem was that everyone thought they were too good to play at RBC,” he says. “Me, too.”
Just like with Myrthe van Kesteren, his achievements increasingly seeped into his private life. De Lange: “In my entire career I have only suffered from sleeping problems that season.”
Fire in the eyes
To turn the tide at least mentally, RBC rented one mental coach in. But the group session was not a success. “They just laughed about it,” says De Lange. “That whole season was one big low point.”
For Myrthe van Kesteren, a few individual visits to a sports psychologist actually turned out well. “It gave me insight into myself and my incorrect handling of frustrations.”
But what helped her most, she says, was a winter break trip with six other players from her team. “We started playing indoor hockey. We had a lot of fun and we became champions. That gave me new energy.”
Professor Nico van Yperen nods when he hears the story. “Doing something different in a new environment is a very good and well-known way to regain the fun of playing.”
Van Kesteren still plays in the major league, now with Rotterdam. “That one season cost me a lot, but I also learned so much. I am still super competitive, but I never want to and will never be the Myrthe from back then.”
Joren Romijn tried to formulate new goals for himself during the season. For example, he took the lead even more emphatically as an experienced player during training, for example in disciplinary terms. “If we do everything we can, we have a chance to stay in it,” he told his teammates. “I think I should do it as an older player, but I also enjoy being at the forefront of the battle.”
After the deception against Pinoké (8-1 loss), the team put their heads together. Harsh words were spoken. What followed was a good match against top club Bloemendaal. Although that too was lost, “but I saw fire in my eyes again,” says Romijn. “That gave me satisfaction and hope for the first victory.”
Shit in the pants
A few days later, on Sunday afternoon, March 29, it really has to happen for Hurley. The Amsterdam team plays against Schaerweijde, the number three from the bottom. It is theoretically the best chance of victory that remains for Hurley to avoid direct relegation.
But it doesn’t happen that afternoon in Zeist.
Hurley looks like a rudderless ship, no matter how Romijn tries to coach and encourage his team. It loses 2-1. Even after seventeen games, the team has one point.
Afterwards, Romijn stares motionless for fifteen minutes in the dugout. “We played with shit in our pants,” he says as he leaves the field. When asked about his feelings, he says: “I mainly feel emptiness right now.”
And then, on Sunday April 12, in the away match against HDM, Hurley suddenly seemed to rise again, as if by magic. It plays convincingly, with two players who have returned from injuries. With willpower. It scores, it collects.
Five minutes before the end, the team throws away all trepidation with a 1-1 score. Romijn goes to the side to bring in an extra field player. The plan works. Hurley forces a penalty corner that disappears fabulously into the top left corner thanks to one of the returning players. Four rounds before the end, the first victory is a fact.
Afterwards, Romijn stands beaming in the sun. “We’re still alive!” The song blares from the speakers Get luckyfrom Daft Punk:
Like the legend of the phoenix / All ends with beginnings.