ALL HAIL THE HOMECOMING HEROES...
IRELAND’S hockey heroes were given a rapturous reception at yesterday’s homecoming after claiming silver at the Women’s World Cup in London. Thousands of fans sporting banners and flags crammed onto Dame Street in Dublin’s city centre as the team took to the stage sporting their medals to bask in the adulation of the crowd. ‘We had no idea how many people were watching at home. We’re very grateful to all the supporters and nonhockey supporters that turned out for us,’ said coach Graham Shaw. ‘We set out to enjoy it. We said we would enjoy every single second of it.’
AFTER the glory and the heroes’ return, comes the new reality. And if there is to be a lasting consequence to the remarkable deeds of the Irish women’s hockey team at the World Cup, then what passes for real life in Irish sport will have to change.
A small group of dedicated athletes and the people who coach and manage them, earned the silver medals that hung around their necks in Dublin city centre yesterday.
They surprised the hockey world in reaching the final in London. They wowed the country, where hockey is a marginal sport. But a lesson that has been imparted countless times at Olympic Games and various championships around Europe and the world is that marginal does not equal less serious.
The standards of excellence pursued are as intimidating as in any sport, the effort required as fierce and as unforgiving.
Everything that has come the way of the Irish hockey team in praise has been deserved.
Some of the players became emotional when the Minister for Sport announced at their homecoming that an additional €1.5 million in funding would be made available this year for teams preparing for the Tokyo Olympics and world championships.
It was accompanied by the promise that much of this extra investment would go to the hockey team. For an ambitious side who will be desperate to maintain their progress and qualify for the 2020 Games, the announcement by Shane Ross must indeed feel like a new reality.
But really, it was little more than the squalid status quo revealing itself, as politicians wring what they can from a sporting good news story.
Short-term advantage has for generations dictated the attitude from the political class to sport in Ireland, and the declaration from Ross yesterday was just another example of it.
There is, of course, no sports team with Olympic ambitions that won’t have welcomed his news — but precisely because high performance sport is inadequately funded in this country, and always has been.
And that’s because sport isn’t taken seriously enough. It is not seen as a way of inspiring young people, of tackling the increasingly deadly costs of a sedentary society, of funding incredible young people to make Ireland shine on a global stage.
No, sport is ignored until it provides an easy photo opportunity for shameless attention seekers. Charlie Haughey was widely mocked in 1987 for hijacking Stephen Roche’s moment of glory after winning the Tour de France.
The carry on is no less edifying nowadays.
If the Minister for Sport were truly serious about supporting ambitious athletes like the Ireland women’s hockey team, he would argue in government for the importance of sports funding and demand that it is increased, so that there is no need for ministers like him to use funding as a reward that reduces players to tears of gratitude.
Less than a fortnight ago, Ross was trumpeting the arrival of a new national sports policy, to run for a decade up to 2027.
Some figures from the chapter dealing with high performance sport indicate the hopelessly ineffective levels of funding presided over by governments — including this one. Comparisons were drawn between Ireland and countries of similar population size, to gauge what they spend on Olympic preparations.
In the four-year Olympic cycle up to the Rio Games, from 2013 to 2016, New Zealand invested €152.1 million. Denmark spent €74.9 million. Ireland invested €37.1 million. As the authors of the report point out, for twice the investment, Denmark enjoyed seven times as many medals in Rio as Ireland did.
The link between investment and success in sport is direct, and it didn’t take this document to establish it. But the figures contained within it are a reminder of that very straight connection. Spend more and athletes can prepare better and will do better.
As is the nature of such policies, there are very grand ambitions. One is to double the amount invested in Irish sport overall, from the current figure of €112 million to €220 million.
But to maintain the impact made by the likes of the hockey team, as well as Ireland’s best rowers, the exciting generation of track athletes emerging, and the considerable boxing talent that remains within the Irish system and is preparing for Tokyo, investment at the high performance end has to increase radically. Piecemeal allocations handed out by Shane Ross as rewards for the latest good news story do not equal serious, considered funding.
Until that changes, then the reality around elite sport in the Irish system will not change.
One of the most important points raised in the new policy document is for a change from the current annual funding system to a multiannual one.
This would mean sports preparing for major championships would be funded, ideally for a four-year Olympic cycle. This allows for better planning, the employment of better coaches thanks to more secure contracts, and it brings certainty to a system where enough uncertainty exists thanks to the risk of injury and losses of form.
This change needs to happen now, but in truth it won’t impact on preparations for Tokyo.
The 2020 Olympics is less than two years away, and many athletes
“Government’s role should be to facilitate excellence” “Piecemeal allocations by Ross do not equal serious funding”
have now planned their full schedule between now and the spring and early summer of 2020 as they seek to achieve qualification standards.
It would be nice to think that come the 2024 Olympics in Paris, the Irish system will have evolved and will be funded to an extent that allows as many competitors and teams to qualify as possible.
That should be the role of government in elite sport: facilitating excellence.
It shouldn’t be about the cheap publicity shot or the grand gesture that attracts quick headlines but has a negligible impact on longterm support for Ireland’s best.
Legacy is one of the most abused terms in sport. It is largely meaningless, too, because great achievements tend to be one-offs, owing to prevailing circumstances at a particular time.
To turn the seldom into the commonplace, to honour heroes like the hockey team and allow their excellence to flourish, the legacy needs to be more investment.
It needs, most of all, to be a new reality for the State and its relationship to sport.