By Bernardo Fernandes
As coach, fan and someone who apparently still cares, I am curious to see how the European Hockey Federation – or must I say ‘J I’ as the new logo seems to indicate (…!?) will manage a once again amateur and conflictive calendar planning, where Indoor competitions – an important pillar for the sport on most European countries is completely ‘strangled’ by the perspective of Olympic qualifiers and a World Cup of the most bizarre format ever created – hockey5s.
How will countries like Poland, Switzerland or Ukraine for whom Indoor is not only a great competitive platform but also provides a crucial government funding combine resources and athletes for 3 different competitions (and different formats) within 2/3 weeks time?
What about Netherlands, the only ‘powerhouse’ who were strangely participating in this Hockey5s circus. Announcing that they “will no longer participate in the European and World Championships for indoor hockey and Hockey 5s“, but what were their plans? Were they taking an outdoor group for a training camp in South Africa, an indoor representation to Belgium and some days later another group to Oman in order to participate on the Hockey5s World Cup?
In recent years, the competitive gap between the top countries and the rest increased drastically. The overloaded International calendar and growing professionalisation of domestic leagues like the Dutch, German or the Belgian contributed to that unbalance.
Well, for most European nations, particularly those participating in second and third tier competitions, which are also the ones where the sport survives between pure amateurism and volunteerism it is necessary a well thought annual calendar. There, players need to ‘stretch’ themselves between club and national team commitments but also to combine their athletic career with academic and professional life.
The previous calendar was already saturated between club and national team, indoor and outdoor commitments. Yet for many, indoor was a ‘beacon’. During that period it was possible to compete against stronger teams, nations, players. A special motivation for players and also an interesting appeal for smaller national associations. For many, the perspective of some additional funding/sponsoring (important to keep the sport alive all year long).
How on earth did we think it feasible to add a couple of official Hockey5 competitions? For which purpose?
For many, this European ‘submission’ seems to be related with a possible bigger pressure from FIH to support Hockey5s as the next evolution of our sport. The natural progression of hockey.
Is this (absurd) format ‘to be’ worth compromising and eventually collapsing structures well stablished around the previous outdoor-indoor balance?
In the top countries, Hockey represents an industry that involves thousands of people and generates millions of euros.
Once the management of our continental and international organisations have been damaging and weakening the sport with some outlandish decisions I suppose the hope for the sport is in the realisation (particularly) from the top countries that we need a more realistic approach to international vs domestic, to outdoor and indoor.
Otherwise the sport will become even more devalued. From a competitive and commercial perspective.
As the Dutchman Jacques Brinkman wisely says: ‘We need to be careful that Hockey doesn’t become the next korfbal’ – a sport with a reduced number of competitive nations, participating members and popularity worldwide.
