Irish cricket can show hockey how to build a silver legacy

By Stephen Findlater

The surreal nature of the Irish women’s run to the World Cup final was encapsulated when Al Jazeera came calling, placing the Green Army’s run right after a Russian military rock festival in a ‘weird wide world’ type segment.

Graham Shaw and his cohorts’ exploits spread as far as ESPN in the US and Sky New Zealand, while Dame St was thronged for their Dublin homecoming.

Seven days earlier, just three journalists were in situ to follow their journey such was Ireland’s success out of left field.

The question now is how does hockey secure some sort of lasting legacy rather than being just that mad week when more than 400,000 watched a few games on RTÉ.

Coach Shaw and his players have used their new platform to call for a permanent base after Hockey Ireland’s lapsed arrangement with UCD’s National Stadium.

Hockey Ireland chief executive Jerome Pels says he will remain tight-lipped about what their next steps are until they have an idea about what additional funds are available and what they can actually use them for.

It would seem the most important step is to move past reliance on the begging bowl of government funding and finally land alternative revenue streams for high performance.

Hockey Ireland gets core funding of €900,000, of which €620,000 is shared by the senior men and women. In the past, both sides have done significant fundraising to give themselves a greater chance of progress.

Funding team sports, though, is expensive and while this is a decent level of funding compared to other sports outside of rugby, GAA, soccer, golf, and horse-racing, it leaves them with a fraction of the resources of their international rivals.

Cricket is the obvious model to try and emulate, an organisation which now draws just 10%-15% of its funds from the Government.

“From CEO meetings in the past, it struck me the over-reliance on government funding from a lot of the different sporting bodies,” Cricket Ireland chief Warren Deutrom told the Irish Examiner.

“Having your hand out all the time to the Government for help is a big risk because when times aren’t good, that’s suppressed.

“Hockey now has the publicity and oxygen to get out there. The opportunity is there for one brand to make a massive cut-through in a sport that is so big now in the public domain.”

Back in 2007, Deutrom was close to a one-man band and he was three months into the role when they broke boundaries at the World Cup. A draw with Zimbabwe and a win over Pakistan on St Patrick’s Day propelled them into a whole new stratosphere.

Deutrom was one of just two full-time employees, alongside national coach Adi Birrell, with the organisation as well as a part-time PA.

Now, they are able to pay players as well as administrators, have a suite of a dozen sponsors, and can feed €900,000 into their provincial branches. It has seen active involvement ramp up from around 12,000 people to 50,000 in the last 11 years.

Reflecting on their preparations for the dream “what if” scenario, Deutrom remembers he was in meetings where the prevailing mood was “ah bless him, he’s new”.

Former Hockey Ireland CEOs Angus Kirkland and Rob Johnson — now on the board — both tapped Deutrom up for information about how they made hay from that “what if” moment.

Deutrom drilled it down to two main questions. “We took it back to first principals — 1, how can we do this again? 2, how can we do this better?

“Our success at that stage was driven by a talented group of players, an inspirational coach, and a bloody hard-working group of volunteers.

“How can we make sure the organisation can then have a much deeper involvement in facilitating long-term success?”

He says it was the time to take big risks for big rewards. Deutrom “bet the farm” on running a seemingly fanciful one-day international against England, spending over 10% of Cricket Ireland’s turnover on the stands alone for a Tuesday game in September.

It paid off handsomely with Malahide immaculate for the Sky Sports cameras. It also moved the focus away from sporadic events like the World Cup, widening the offering for sponsors and the public eye.

To that end, he says there is no better time to get hockey out there with a spot in the Pro League in three years’ time, guaranteeing 18 televised matches worldwide over a six-month spell, something they must target.

“Now is the time to reap the commercial benefits and they can only do that with professional people on that on a day-in, day-out basis and engineer revenue.

“If you are not willing to put yourself into that domain, shouting loud enough and then centralising your resources into a small number of opportunities, you are never going to make a big success.

“If you are only dependent on World Cup and Olympics and qualification, there is an inherent risk of doing well every four years and then sinking into obscurity.”