With the death of Paul Litjens (76), Dutch hockey loses one of its most successful players. A heavily built attacker with a characteristic headband who was not overflowing with technique, but with strength and accuracy. And a personality, both inside and outside the lines.
For example, reserve player Litjens left the Olympic village at the 1972 Games in Munich after the Palestinian attack on Israeli athletes (eleven dead). His captain Nico Spits thought it was an exaggerated reaction and downplayed the event, which caused a riot. “Those who stayed had more explaining to do,” Litjens reflected decades later hockey.nl. “I thought you shouldn’t stay at a party when people have been shot there.”
Star player Litjens did participate in the 1978 World Cup in Argentina, which was then under the reign of terror by junta leader Videla – and lost to Pakistan in the final. Regarding his criticized ‘turn’, he stated on the same site: “I had read all the Amnesty reports, but did not believe that a boycott would be effective. If you were to boycott all sporting events, you might as well shut down the entire international sport.”
Record holder
Paul Litjens, 177-time international, is the all-time top scorer in the Dutch team with 266 goals. He scored hat-tricks in 24 international matches, also a record. In one international match he scored eight goals, without improving either. His personal highlight: between August 1979 and June 1980 he scored in seventeen consecutive international matches.
Litjens scored by far his most goals from a penalty corner, with Coen Kranenberg and later Tim Steens as a hand stopper. Their fingers were sometimes hit by Litjens’ swinging stick. Risk of the trade, the executioner thought. The hand stop inside the circle later became – it had long been abandoned – a stick stop outside the circle.
Litjens was hard on himself but also on his opponents. When, during a rare indoor hockey match – his game type was not suitable for a small playing field – he pushed the ball hard against the head of a line stopper, and the victim had to be taken to hospital, the shooter claimed a penalty from the referee without batting an eyelid. .
Litjens made his debut on the field in 1970 in the Dutch national team and won the world title with the Dutch team in Amstelveen in 1973. As a penalty corner specialist, he was still in the shadow of Ties Kruize, the World Cup hero with nine goals, two of which in the final against India. After his serious car accident in 1975, it was Litjens’ turn. Kruize would recover almost completely and return to the Dutch team within a year and a half, but Litjens remained the first cornerman.
Rivalry with KZ
In the late seventies and early eighties he formed a golden trio at his club Kampong with the slightly older André Bolhuis and the much younger Tom van ‘t Hek. Litjens became top scorer in the Dutch big league for seven seasons in a row. With 267 goals for his club, he is in fifth place on the all-time rankings.
The rivalry with Little Switzerland was great at that time. Three brothers Kruize and two brothers Steens played in The Hague. KZ played technically, Kampong played physically. “A feud is a big word, it was more like a serious heath fire,” says Van ‘t Hek, who played with Litjens in Utrecht for about eight years. “It was an unspoken rivalry. On a personal level, we got along fine with those nice guys from The Hague. The Dutch team lacked chemistry. We had a top team, but partly because of that we didn’t win enough.”
Very amiable off the field
Litjens occasionally received a yellow card, often for complaining about the lead. He was the first big league player ever to be suspended for a match. Van ‘t Hek: “When I, as a young boy, protested against the referee, Paul shouted from seventy meters away: ‘Never mind Tom, that man has ears but no eyes.’ And damn, he got a yellow card straight away.” But Litjens was “an extremely amiable person” off the field.
Smoker and drinker Litjens did not really live for his sport. “He did a lot and left little in return,” said his teammate, ten years his junior. During European Cup tournaments abroad, he sometimes went solo into the nightlife. With his large body and long, dark mane, he was known as a womanizer. He lived separately in recent years, after two long-term relationships. Nothing is officially known about the cause of death. Former GP Van ‘t Hek: “His entire body showed signs of wear.”
Litjens retired from top hockey at Kampong at the age of 35 and later became a board member. Van ‘t Hek, in an initial response to the NOS: “Without looking for conflict, Paul could kick against everything that was bobo. A few years later it was him himself.”
Litjens was asked twice as a substitute coach to save Kampong from relegation. That worked, but he remained modest. “We just talk about taking the ball and not about half-pressing in the ashes.” In recent years, the club icon regularly stood along the line at his beloved Kampong, raising a glass in the clubhouse afterwards.
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