Jumping through hoops
Debbie Massey stands 5ft 10ins in her stockinged feet. Tall she certainly is but basketball’s most powerful figure is more anxious to have people look up to her in another sense.
She suggested, in an understated and indirect way, that this day may not be too far distant.
“I’m delighted with the job. I really feel now that after nearly two years we’re making great progress.
“I’ll be a happier camper in a year for now when things are starting to really roll out but I am fulfilled in my work,” said one of the most powerful women in Irish sport.
The time span is significant because next May, when the IBA hold their annual meeting, Debbie’s blueprint for the future of basketball will be subjected to intense scrutiny. If her strategy document is wholeheartedly accepted then, one senses, it will be the equivalent of a slam dunk. The strategy plan represents the core of Debbie’s vision of what the future holds for basketball; a sport teetering indecisively at a critical time, like a confused driver searching for the road to the motorway at a remote fingerpost.
The plan is not just the product of two year’s work in her current position. Debbie used ten years of intensive work with the GAA as an invaluable aid to understanding basketball’s needs and prescribing the perfect tonic.
The advertisement for the job with basketball came at the perfect time for her.
“I was well used to the whole area of management and I was well used to the whole concept around sport and sport administrators but I didn’t see any barricade just because it was basketball, in fact I played basketball in school.
“I never played gaelic and that didn’t stand in my way and once you’re a sports administrator basically the main areas are all the same. You have your main areas that you need to look after; your game development, your governance and management, provision of your disciplines level with coaches or referees or whatever else, high performance and the domestic sport itself, so it’s the same no matter what sport and I was delighted to get the basketball job and I’ve never looked back.”
She explained how she went into sports management with the GAA.
“I started working with the GAA in 1989 on a temporary basis and two years later ended up applying for the position of policy and planning manager which was a newly-created position.
“It really involved a whole area of administration and working with volunteers providing provision of training courses. I don’t know if you have heard of the Comhairle programme but certainly GAA people would have heard of it.
“That was my entire responsibility; training trainers, training facilitators and basically delivering reports to clubs. I travelled the length and breadth of the country and I think I possibly met somebody from every single club in the country which was a fair achievement.
“Also I was working with the women’s game, the women’s football and camogie, with a view to trying to get them on board with full membership of the GAA which they actually aren’t at the moment, they are separate entities.
“It involved working with the overseas unit, any unit of the GAA outside of Ireland which is a huge diverse group of people from everywhere around the globe which people may not be familiar with.
“I really fought their cause, particularly the teams and counties in England, in trying to get them involved more and to give them more services and more support and indeed North America which is a huge area for gaelic games and Australia also.
“A lot of the work I would have done was creating the first ever data base for the clubs within the GAA and getting this whole system up and running.
“Club of the Year would have been another project of mine which is running very heathily now, thanks be to God, with AIB. All that kind of work, developmental work, the administrative rule of the Association, I would have had a lot of input into that.
“It was a hell of a place to gain years of administration experience in sport and I wasn’t actively looking for a job to be honest. But I had had ups and downs the previous year or two and in my mind I thought I’ve done enough here, I think it’s time to move on.
“Basketball in Ireland is like a multi-faceted gem. Each side glories in its own characteristics, each side is polished to a different degree. Some are glistening brilliantly, others suffused but full of richness just waiting to be enhanced by appropriate attention and investment.
Debbie explained: “Basketball is quite complicated in its structures in the country. It’s a 32-county sport, it has an NEC, a National Executive Committee, which runs the sport between AGMs as the governing body.
“Then it has a number of disciplines or sectors within the sport. Certainly, for example, secondary schools girls and boys are two separate entities with their own national executive committees.
THE referees' body, BOCI, is a totally separate entity, it is a separate legal entity, with no answerability to the Irish Basketball Association which is unheard of in any sport in this country and I think unheard of in basketball all over the world.
“In all fairness to all of the people concerned in the different sectors in basketball, each sector has had its spurts of growth and its period of good development but they don’t coincide with each other.
“There hasn’t been a kind of overall strategic plan in place whereby everybody knows these are the main goals and the main objectives. This is my part that I’m playing in it, or my section, to achieve the overall goals within the sport.
“So there’s been a lot of consultation gone on over the last year-and-a-half, particularly within the groups who have a level of independence, to try and, number one, not lose any of the voluntary workers who are already involved and, number two, to try and get people to buy into a new structure and a new administrative system for the whole sport.
“Under-pinning all of that is the main goal and that is to introduce eight regions in Ireland, pretty much chopping the country up, leaving Ulster as it stands because they have the jurisdiction of the Northern Ireland Sports Council for separate funding.
“Then we have seven other regions. Prior to introducing this proposal, schoolboys have eight area boards, schoolgirls have eight area boards and they don’t match.
“Irish Basketball Association has 14 area boards and the referees’ body has eight other area boards. So if you were to put all of these area boards on transparencies and lie them on top of each other there would be a cross-over obviously.
“But they don’t talk to each other on the ground so rather than trying to go down the suicidal route of asking all of these area boards to disband we said we’d introduce a regional development board at a level above that. We’re talking of eight of them around the country and we will request the Sports Council to give us some funding towards full-time regional development officers so that we can full-time people on the ground.”
To suggest that Debbie Massey is driven when it comes to her profession is to leave oneself open to a charge of under-statement. To attempt to compress her comprehensive evaluation of basketball and her vision of the sport as she envisages it into one article is like trying to drive a nail into granite.
What is abundantly clear is that she has a picture of the future that is as sharply in focus as if it were firmly framed within the sights of a sniper.
Basketball faces into the biggest weekend of the season, the climax to the cup competitions, with the sport at a critical stage. There are many forces at work, many contrasting if not conflicting driving forces impacting upon its development.
Not least is the tug o' war between the many amateur branches and the professional game for the attention of the IBA. There are contrasting views on the merits of increased investment in a senior international team made up largely of non-native players and increasing demands from the National League clubs for more financial support.
To lead such a diverse group to the motorway in the one vehicle is a daunting challenge and one that Debbie Massey will not shirk. She believes she has the right vehicle to accommodate them all and that when her project is completed they will look up to her. She said: "We’re at the stage where we’re hoping on the 24th May, which is the date of the IBA’s AGM that the schoolboys, the schoolgirls, the colleges and the referees’ association will all hold their AGMs on the same day with us.
"And that all of the parties will come together and debate if necessary and then adopt the strategic plan for the sport for the next five years.”
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
