Environment for Black Sticks ‘sub-par’
The spotlight is back on the women’s Black Sticks programme at Hockey New Zealand following complaints and an exodus of female support staff in recent months.
Stuff understands complaints about the environment started in August 2019. Later that year support staff raised concerns with the now outgoing HNZ chief executive Ian Francis and now former high performance director Paul MacKinnon. It is alleged by some within the programme that those concerns were not addressed.
Francis, who resigned in July but has not yet left HNZ, said he and the board were made aware a formal complaint had been laid with High Performance Sport NZ in May this year.
HPSNZ chief executive Michael Scott said he wrote to HNZ to ‘‘express our concerns’’ and ‘‘request that they respond in writing to the complainant with the steps to be taken to address their concerns’’.
Francis confirmed the board chair and a board member then met with a player to discuss concerns about the environment.
However, concerns were again raised, this time by the wider Black Sticks team, in late June. An email was sent from the athletes to the board and Stuff understands the correspondence included allegations of ‘‘sub-par’’ organisation, unprofessionalism and a lack of communication.
Issues were raised in a ‘‘good, open discussion’’ between athletes and HNZ’s people and culture committee following the email, board chair Mike Bignall said.
Following this, it’s alleged athletes were ‘‘punished’’ for speaking up by being ‘‘shut out’’ of high performance training facilities for a week.
Some athletes had travelled to Auckland to train, when they
allegedly received an email from head coach Graham Shaw saying training was cancelled. Stuff has been told when the athletes asked for clarity regarding the ‘‘shutout’’ they were not given answers by the coach or by HNZ.
Francis and Bignall told Stuff
the women’s team trainings were ‘‘paused’’ in late July to allow time to ‘‘reset the programme following recent changes with coaching staff’’. Bignall said the athletes were ‘‘by no means’’ being punished for speaking up.
Stuff understands four female support staff, including the team manager, sports psychologist and assistant coach Katie Glynn, have left the programme in recent months.
Bignall declined to comment on whether Glynn had signed a non-disclosure agreement with Hockey New Zealand pertaining to her departure, but Stuff
understands she did.
‘‘That’s a private matter between her and us,’’ he said.
Stuff tried to contact Glynn, but received no response. She has joined former Black Sticks coach Mark Hager in the United Kingdom.
Bignall said exit interviews are undertaken with those who depart the high performance programme, but Stuff has been told reasons for the departures remain unclear to the wider Black Sticks team.
‘‘Some of the communications could have been better – that’s one of the things we said to the [players] we need to up that, and that’s what we’ve done,’’ he said.
A review was undertaken by Maria Dew in late 2018, addressing concerns about the negative environment within the Black Sticks women’s programme and player welfare issues. It was released in 2019 and resulted in Hagar’s departure as coach after a long and successful tenure. Shaw was appointed to replace him.
Stuff understands both players and support staff were never given the full review by HNZ.
There are claims that many of the issues that were present in 2018 still exist today.
But Bignall said some recommendations in the review have been applied, including players having access to ‘‘multiple feedback channels’’, including being encouraged to engage directly with the board.