Coming Full Circle

They say that Fashion comes around again if you wait long enough. Does the same apply to sport? Well it would appear that it does in the world of Hockey.

The FIH Pro League is about to commence this weekend. For those who don’t know, this is a unique global home and away competition, involving nine men’s and nine women’s National teams playing each other over five continents in six months. At the end of the home and away legs the top four teams will meet in Amsterdam to play off for the right to be crowned Pro League Champions.

The Top four teams will then qualify to play in the Olympic qualifiers.

India were selected to play in the Pro -League but they withdrew both their women’s and men’s teams just over a month after the announcement of the participants. The United States of America women’s team is in the league. They did not apply for their men to participate. These two nations are key players when it comes to events coming full circle.

To the Hockey World the Olympic Games gold medal is the pinnacle of the sport, followed by the World Cup. Yet as has been well documented Hockey’s place at the Olympic table has been under threat in recent years.

In fact the IOC advised NTFS that “In keeping with the normal process of review, Hockey is currently included as a sport into the Olympic Games Paris 2024. No sports are yet confirmed for the Olympic Games Los Angeles 2028 and it is anticipated that this review process for the sports programme will take place in 2021.”

So with the USA returning as hosts in Los Angeles in 2028 it is vital that the USA women’s team performs well in the Pro League and makes the Olympic qualifiers, and then hopefully qualifies for Tokyo 2020.

There are already rumblings coming out of the Local Organising Committee of the 2028 Games that they want to see sports that Americans can medal in as part of the Games. If their athletes are not going to be competitive, they are not that interested in having that sport as part of the Games. However Hockey Fives, which many traditionalists see as far removed from the traditional game, almost like British Bulldogs being a smaller version of Gridiron, is on the agenda. Being a relatively new sport it may pique interest, and the USA believe they could be competitive in that format.

One of the major issues for Hockey is that the American women have been competitive, but their male counterparts have not. In fact the playing numbers show that this is an area of neglect, and has been for a while. Women’s participation has made up, and continues to make up over 90% of all registered field hockey players in the USA. To show the disparity between the sexes in 2016 there were 16,234 registered female players in the under 19 age group. There were only 114 males in the same age group.

By comparison, Australia had registered in the same period 61,389 male players and 71,463 women playing, while the USA had 1,114 male players and 22,981 female players. In a number of countries the female participation was higher than the male, which one can link back to how women were the first to spread the game and promote it. However in no country was there such an imbalance between the participation numbers.

It would be interesting to know what the FIH’s development team, and also USA Field Hockey had planned and implemented to address the gender imbalance, and what the figures are today. The reason being that this could have a huge bearing on the sport’s Olympic future. In addition, without Olympic participation the FIH would still have a role to play, but that has been its key reason for existence.

This is where it is interesting to turn back the pages of history. In the early part of the last century it was in fact women who played the greatest part in boosting participation in Hockey and spreading the game globally. Some have claimed that much of this was linked to women fighting for equal rights and recognition. Whatever the reason the sport has a lot to be grateful to women for.

Following the end of World War I and the resumption of the Olympic Games the IOC ruled that every participating nation must have its own National Olympic Committee. They also ruled that each sport must have a World Federation that dealt with the IOC.

The 1924 Olympic Games were to be held in Paris. Hockey at that time did not have a World Federation and the game was essentially being run by the Hockey Association based in England. In light of how one-sided the Hockey Tournaments at the two Olympic Games had been, England saw little or no merit in being a part of the Olympics.

The French wanted Hockey in their Olympics and wrote to the Hockey Association to register as a World body. They gave it little or no importance.

The IOC rejected Hockey for the 1924 Olympics because there was no World body. However the French as hosts were not going to take ‘no’ as an answer. The federation Francaise de Hockey had only recently become a sole entity on the French sporting landscape. They managed to garner support from six other European Associations and in January 1924 set up the Federation Internationale de Hockey, or FIH as we know it today.

They still had to win over the IOC for inclusion at the Paris Games. They failed, but at the Congress held in Paris during the Games the FIH was recognised by the IOC, who coincidentally had a French President, and Hockey was reinstated into the Olympic Games. Meaning that it would appear at the next games in 1928.

Amsterdam was the host in 1928. The Netherlands were not the powerhouse nation they are today, but they played the sport, which made a great difference. Nine nations competed and the final was played between the hosts, and a new Olympic hockey participant in India. India were victorious.

The next Games were in Los Angeles in 1932, and at that time hockey was a very minor sport in the USA. They had just six clubs playing the game. Despite that, they formed a National Association and affiliated with the FIH. Following that move and pressure from the FIH saw the US Olympic committee include Hockey in the schedule for the Games. Teams travel arrangements were subsidised, but only Japan and India travelled to the Games, and India won Gold again.

There was at the time a belief that Hockey was destined for the chop once again at the Los Angeles Games, but it was in fact India’s victory in 1928, and not the FIH that is believed to have swayed the IOC and the Americans to include the sport. The Olympics had up until 1928 been dominated by the European nations and America. It was clear that the Great Depression would have an impact on nations travelling to the Games and the US subsidised many athletes travel. India was a country that had been thrust into the world limelight by actions of Ghandhi, and India’s hockey team had a become a beacon of hope in India and for the rest of Asia and other nations under Colonial rule. They were the story that the Olympic Games needed. Had they axed hockey and denied India the chance to defend their Gold medal, the IOC would have been accused of being protectionist, and trying to keep the medals with Western powers. The public were in awe that India, at that time classified as “an underprivileged country” could produce such a superior team. There would have been an outcry if they had been denied the chance to play again.

Of course history will show that they went on to win six consecutive Olympic Gold medals, and when they were finally deposed by Pakistan the two nations shared the next three Olympic titles.

The Paris Olympic Games in 1924, may not have witnessed Hockey being played, but they were the games that ensured Hockey’s Olympic future. How sad it would be if they were to be Hockey’s last Olympic games as an 11-a-side game.

India had a great deal to do with Hockey’s survival in the Olympic Games, and now almost one hundred years later it would appear that India is the lifeblood of the FIH. Just as it kept their very reason for existence alive, now their existence is dependent on revenue from India. Hence their acceptance back into the Pro League in 2021.

Despite these two facts it is the USA that is the focus. Their Women’s team must perform in the Pro League following a disappointing World Cup in London. They must qualify for Tokyo 2020 if there is any hope of 11-a-side being a part of the Los Angeles Games almost 100 years on from the first time.

Yet that may be hoping too much. The USA’s success was built around the success of the women’s college program, and that saw them finish third at the 1994 World Cup and fourth at the World Cup in 2014. The problem was where were the girls to play once they finished College? There was no league set up to accommodate these players or pull in players from outside the college system.

Now that very system that brought the USA success is in fact benefitting other nations, such as Ireland and Canada, as their players win places in the US College system. To back this point up the recently announced NCAA All American Teams were heavily weighted towards foreign students. In the first team selection there were 8 out of 16 players, in total over three teams 30 of the 48 players selected were foreign students. Meaning only 18 of the 48 were American. Which dilutes the talent pool considerably.

Having at one stage had a world ranking of four the USA women’s team has now slipped to twelfth. Only Belgium in the Women’s Pro League is ranked lower than them at 13th. With recent retirements from key experienced players such as Melissa Gonzalez and goalkeeper Jackie Briggs making the Olympic qualifiers via this route will be a tough road to travel. Even in the Pan American qualifiers, Canada and Argentina stand in their way for direct qualification.

For the sake of Olympic Hockey let us hope they can prove the doubters wrong. One thing is for sure, the Los Angeles Olympics could once again have a big say in Hockey’s future. Who knows, could a win to India in 2020 once again be the key?