Munster must focus on recruitment and retention

Ahead of the next week’s forum in Mallow on the future of men’s and boys’ hockey in Munster, the Irish Hockey Association’s western regional development officer Phil Oakley outlines some of the challenges facing the male side of the sport in 2013 Around 2-3 years ago, there was a shift in the focus of the Irish Hockey Association’s development programmes. We are funded by the Irish Sports’ Council’s Women In Sport (WIS) fund, which is designed to support the development of women’s sport, which means a significant amount of our work goes into the girls’ and women’s side of the game. Given the declining boys’ numbers, it was crucial that we began to focus further on this side of the sport, while still fulfilling our commitment to our WIS responsibilities. At this time – the 2010/2011 season – we had just over 400 boys playing hockey in clubs in the province from U16 down. This had dropped from 479 in 2008/2009, so clearly something was wrong. From what we could gather, there were two key areas that needed to be looked at – recruitment of players by clubs, and the retention of players. This formed the focus of the IHA-led forum run in 2011. The first major outcome of that meeting was that clubs were doing little to actually actively recruit players and were basically taking what came through the gate. On the other hand, we are not retaining players for a variety of reasons through the age groups and this is evident from the numbers.

In 2008/2009, we had 205 boys at U10 level, and in 2010/2011 the U12 number was 104. Somewhere within that two-year period, we lost a significant number of kids. There are drop-offs from every age group. This was a huge wake-up call for everyone within the sport in Munster, and it was partly because it had never been measured before. Last year, the IHA undertook a wide scale survey to study population trends and attitudes within the sport, and for boys the negatives included the profile and perception of the sport. We also know that a lack of competitive opportunities when compared to other sports was an issue. For example, if you play schoolboys football this year at U14 level, you would have played around 18 games coming into January and in rugby you would be in an eight-team league with additional cup competitions and a significant number of friendlies. Our U14 boys have a league, but some teams have not even played yet this season, and some have only played one game to date. It is not difficult to see why children would choose other sports. Since this time, the IHA have taken various approaches to try and address these issues. On the recruitment side, we began to run taster sessions in primary schools in conjunction with clubs. We piloted this programme with Ashton where we asked the club to take the lead and to find two local boys’ schools for us to work with. The club approached Beaumont Boys and St Anthony’s and both schools agreed for us to come in and work with 4th class groups. A club member and an IHA coach visited the schools over a two-week period and ran specially designed sessions to show the sport as fun and exciting. The club then held an open day and increased their junior numbers on the back of this. Last year the programme was rolled out further and all boys’ clubs were offered an opportunity to take part. This was run in several clubs and helped to gain new recruits in most clubs. This was also the basis for Cork schools to attend an open day hosted by UCC, which further supported the programme.

At the end of last season, all of the clubs were contacted again and it was planned to run a programme in September/October 2012. This period is a key time to get new members to join as it is the start of the season, however this never got off the ground. In December 2012, I contacted the clubs again with more success and we are currently running programmes with six clubs in 12 schools. It is not ideal to run them at this time of the year, however I hope that we can run again with the same clubs in the same schools come September. The great thing about this programme from our point of view is that the clubs takes the lead in terms of organising the schools and making contact, so they are automatically building a club-school link which ensures that the club keeps interest in the programme. We insist on the hosting of an open day at the club and that a club member must attend the sessions, so the children can recognise someone when they turn up at the club. It is also a cost-effective programme as there is no large financial commitment on behalf of the IHA compared to other programmes such as Tricks 4 Sticks – the sessions are cheap to run and if they are not successful we can change schools or the approach quickly. Along with this, the IHA ran a programme in Kinsale, which with the support of the local community – particularly Kieran Harte and Kim Kerins – has resulted in a new club with around 25 boys playing regularly. All of this has helped to push our underage numbers to 496 for this year, the highest since we began recording underage numbers since the 2008/2009 season. Funding for these projects has come from a variety of sources including IHA core funding, club contributions, EHF funding, Cork Sports’ Partnership and Limerick City Sports’ Partnership. We still have some senior men’s clubs without junior section, which is extremely worrying for the future of those clubs. On the retention end of things, we have designed coaching resources (Hooked on Games and Hooked on Fun) specifically around the U10 and U12 age groups and complimented these with supporting coaching courses (Stepping Stones for Phase 1, 2 and 3). We ran these courses in Cork, Limerick and Galway this year and while they were well attended, very few boys’ coaches came along. Both the MBIHA and ourselves have outlined the case for organising more friendly inter-club blitzes and matches outside of those organised by the branch at the youth AGMs. It is often the case that playing a match is easier than planning and delivering a training session and children love playing games.

I would also urge clubs to contact players that do not return from season to season to ascertain why they have decided not to come back as this will allow clubs to retain more players. It is not enough to know that a player has decided to play soccer instead of hockey, what’s important is why has that child chosen soccer over hockey – match opportunities, better coaching, more fun, etc? A lot of this is outside the control of clubs of course, and we do compete with sports with much bigger profiles. We also consider the introduction of U14 development squads to be crucial if Munster are to be competitive at interprovincial level. A pilot scheme was planned for last season, however it did not run for a variety of reasons. At secondary school level, we have recently (January 2013) begun to re-introduce hockey into Douglas Community School and they are due to play their first games over the next month or so. We are also hopeful that boys’ hockey will begin in Rockwell College and Catholic Institute have been working in crescent College in Limerick with some success. The IHA hosted a first year 8 v 8 tournament (the format played at U14 club hockey) in November, with nine teams attending. When we spoke to players, very few of them played club hockey, despite the fact that there were clubs local to them. It is planned to host a competitive tournament for the schools in April using the same format. Further up the line, there is a question around what will happen with the senior leagues in the future and how can we plan to keep players playing. We have had between 23 and 27 senior men’s teams since 2006, with this year seeing three new teams added to bring the number back up to 26 from 23 in the 2011/2012 season. Added to this we had appearances from Galway and Waterford in cup competitions, so hopefully there might be something long term there to develop further. I would urge anyone that has any interest in the boys’ and men’s game in Munster to attend on Monday night whether you are a player, parent, coach, teacher or spectator. *The Munster Branch in conjunction with IHA are holding a Men’s and Boy’s Hockey Forum, to discuss the future of the game in Munster on Monday March 11th 2013 in the Hibernian Hotel, Mallow from 7pm. All interested parties – coaches, players, parents, administrators etc – are invited to attend. If you require any more information regarding the forum please contact John Dennis on mudslide@eircom.net or Phil Oakley on phil.oakley@hockey.ie.