Ireland's chief rugby analyst adding another club to his bag

High Performance Analyst Vinny Hammond. ©INPHO/Dan Sheridan

NOT so much the day job as a morning, noon and night occupation, Vinny Hammond is knee deep in his role as the Ireland rugby men’s team head of analysis ahead of a gruelling five-game tour of New Zealand.

Yet while that appeals to the analytical side of Hammond’s brain, the Dubliner has started to cut his teeth with more strategic matters as a member of Golf Ireland’s Board of directors.

Currently en route to the Land of the Long White Cloud for the eagerly-awaited three-test series against the All Blacks, Hammond spoke about his new role away from the oval ball that arose with the creation of a new governing body for golf on the island of Ireland.

Golf Ireland was formed in January 2021, replacing the GUI and ILGU which had governed the game along gender lines for the previous 130 years, with Mark Kennelly as its chief executive and a vision that “golf is a game for everyone - for enjoyment, for health, and for life”.

Based at Carton House, near Maynooth, Golf Ireland is next door to the hotel the Ireland team use as a base when training at the IRFU High Performance Centre in Abbotstown, west Dublin and though there was no link between Hammond and the small-ball sport in a professional sense, he was drawn to an opportunity to explore different avenues in a different environment to the one that paid the bills.

“I had spoken to Mark and expressed an interest in being involved in something different to my own role in the IRFU, which is very operational,” Hammond said. “This is more strategic so I applied through Mark and then was invited onto the board as one of four or five external members.

“I wanted a different challenge that I could do while in my current job as well but maybe give me a different stimulus in that strategic, long-term thinking environment.” 

Hammond describes himself as a “terrible golfer” but his experience in professional rugby made him a natural fit for Golf Ireland’s High Performance committee and he also sits on both the Commercial and Marketing, and Disability and Inclusion Golf committees.

“It was straight in and it’s exciting because there is always something happening whether it’s the Irish Open or the Irish Open for Golfers with Disability, there’s always something new coming like the Get Into Golf programme being launched.

“Maybe in the past, there’s been some criticism around sports organisations sitting still and going with the status quo but I think you’ll see with Golf Ireland there’s a real push, even right down to the stuff they’re trying to do with getting into golf and get the game some kind of exposure, whether it’s going to a driving range and whacking a ball, playing a pitch and putt or a Par-3 course.

“The way I play golf it’s a long, long walk. There’s a Course Ratings Committee and I reckon I should be on that because I’ve seen every bush, every lake and river and I could give them a breakdown of every inch of it. I wouldn’t be able to tell you much about the fairways, mind!

“But the High Performance side of it, we’re good at that. This is a small country but we’re punching way above our weight, male and female.

Hammond has been impressed by the speed and efficiency of the decision-making process at Golf Ireland under the chairmanship of Paul Haran.

“Paul’s come from the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment so he has experience on Boards and is unbelievably good at running a meeting. If it’s scheduled to be 20 minutes it will be 20 minutes. If it’s scheduled to be one hour and 45, it’s one hour and 45. And we’re sent all the papers beforehand."

“It’s probably a model for a business or a lot of start-ups, the clarity in terms of the sub-committees, and having a Board member on each one, so that if something is going left-field it can be flagged beforehand. That’s the way to do it, it seems and I’ve learned loads.

“The commercial and marketing side, we also have to make sure that Golf Ireland is doing well financially and it’s done really well so far, it’s been well governed. Sarah O’Connor from Wilson Hartnell chairs that committee and is also on the board of directors and it’s given me an insight into how we market an event or the sport itself. I’ve never had to think about that before, we turn up and it’s grand so it’s been great to see people who are good at their jobs."