SUMMER ODYSSEY WAS JUST THE START
Women’s hockey has huge potential... if harnessed right
GRAHAM Shaw is still growing accustomed to the attention. The slight flicker of recognition in the eyes of strangers. A few months ago, he was just an anonymous face in the crowd on a night out. Now, he finds himself regularly asked about what happened in London.
It’s becoming a little more normal. People mean well. Usually. Sometimes, he can be taken aback by what’s said, though. A couple of weeks ago, two lads came up to talk about Ireland’s World Cup adventure.
‘One of them asked me straight out “when are you going to take the men’s job?” I just looked at them, a bit shocked. We had just won a silver medal in the World Cup. I want to be with these players for the next six, eight or 10 years if I can! This is a team that can go to the next level.’
Shaw views what happened this summer as simply a base that can be built upon. Their World Cup silver medal means that the Irish team will be seeded for the Tokyo Olympics qualification event. That starts on June 8 and the International Hockey Federation (FIH) confirmed last week that they will be given home advantage for a group that will also contain France, South Korea, Scotland, Malaysia, Czech Republic and the Ukraine. The heroics in London are only the starting point, according to the ambitious coach.
‘In order to be consistent, we are going to have to change the landscape of the sport a little bit,’ Shaw explains. ‘We are now in the top eight in the world, but it is not easy to compete consistently against these teams with limited resources and limited contact time.
‘We are going to have try to level the playing field a bit, We are not going to have the situation where other nations live together on a week-to-week basis, but we should try to get to the stage where our players are training two or three days a week together. The team will improve and that will give us even more consistency at the top level.
‘The sport needs to change. I think we need to be a little bit ambitious and we need to become a little bit more self-sufficient as a governing body.’
A talented soccer player – he played under-age football with Damien Duff and almost signed a professional contract with Oxford United – and Gaelic games player in his youth, Shaw came to hockey later in life. But after discovering his calling, he hasn’t looked back, and coached hockey sides while a student to make some extra money.
‘Yeah, it is something I have always done, coached,’ Shaw says. ‘Even through my years in university, I would have coached to earn a few extra quid. It’s something I would have always been quite passionate about. Did I want to change the sport? As a sportsman, I was ambitious and driven and wanted to see where we could bring this sport.
‘Did I think we would get to a World Cup final that quick? No. I didn’t think it would happen in my lifetime, to be honest. But when I got into coaching, I did say that I wanted to try and impact this sport as much as I can so when I move away, I can leave it in a better place,’ he adds.
Irish hockey is certainly in a better place for Shaw’s involvement. From a ranking of 16th in the world, he led a team that the nation took to its hearts all the way to a World Cup final. Along the way, Ireland got the better of national sides that are full-time and fully-professional.
An obvious question that arises is what the Irish side could do if they were fully-professional and better-funded, but Shaw doesn’t want to go down that route. He reckons Ireland would be better served by a model that supports both the players’ sporting and professional careers.
‘Going fully professional is not something I would be very keen on,’ Shaw states. ‘I am well aware that your sporting career doesn’t last that long and while we are developing hockey players, we are also developing them as people as well. When they finish up playing, we want to see that they have a good career and a good life ahead of them and that they don’t find themselves a little bit lost because they had played in a professional environment all through their 20s and into their mid-30s and they are left wondering what they are going to do. ‘We do compete against nations that are fully professional and that is their model. But I’m a big believer that you need balance, and that our players would be given an opportunity to develop their hockey careers and careers outside sport. ‘We need to be creative in how we do it. We need to work with universities to create an environment where our players can extend their degrees, and we need to work with athlete-friendly companies that are willing to support elite sportspeople and what they can give back to the companies.’ And while the heroics of Ayeisha McFerran and Chloe Watkins remain fresh in the mind, it is better for Hockey Ireland to strike now and find companies that are willing to come on board.
‘They are now in the public eye and people are a lot more aware of them because of the success, that is what we are hoping people will get behind. We don’t want to take those career opportunities away from them and we want to see if we can find that balance.’
While Shaw has carved a place for himself in Irish sporting history as a hockey coach, the sport wasn’t even his first choice when growing up, but he believes this has been a benefit to him.
‘Soccer and GAA were much bigger to me, growing up. I didn’t go to a hockey school, so I would have taken up the game a bit later than your average player. But I think that stood to me, having the
I still find the TV coverage too emotional to watch
knowledge and tactical nous from soccer, the tactical side of things is quite similar in both sports and playing in midfield definitely helped because you need awareness of what is happening around you.
‘Hurling helped too, the physicality of the game and the handeye co-ordination needed, the reading of the game. I would encourage all young people to play as many sports as they possibly can and not to specialise until they get older because I took snippets from each sport that I played and brought it into my hockey coaching.’
He may have been lost to that coaching world had he taken up the offer of a professional football contract with Oxford after they had invited him over for a number of trials at the age of 16.
‘I got offered a contact but between myself and my parents, we decided to focus on my Leaving Cert and somewhere in between, I ended up falling in love with hockey and the rest is history.’
He remembers vividly his last soccer game. How could he forget? He was the midfield general as Lourdes Celtic beat Cherry Orchard 1-0 in an Under-16 final. ‘It was nice to go out on a high.’
It was also his first experience of winning something as a team. More than two decades later, in London, that feeling was replicated when Ireland reached the world cup final. Shaw says he hasn’t brought himself to watch the games through yet – although he has analysed them from a coaching point of view – as he remains moved by the experience.
‘I still find all the television coverage quite emotional to watch, so I haven’t got around to watching a full game back yet. I do fastforward through to the shoot-out and have watched those moments. It is great to re-live that and see the joy and emotion when we got through them.’
And his greatest takeaway from the wild few weeks in London is simply the unity of his team. ‘My greatest memory is how together the squad were,’ he said. ‘It was an absolute joy to see such togetherness within the squad, and such acceptance of each other and how well they got on. And how well they supported each other and backed each other, how close they were together.’
That togetherness will be key as Shaw and his players try to build on what was achieved this summer.