Is Location Really The Issue?

There is an old saying that if you run away from a problem, you will not solve the problem, you will simply change the location of it.

The Kookaburras returned to Australia with a silver medal from the hockey at the Tokyo Olympic Games and were greeted with the news that Hockey Australia President Melanie Woosnam will stand down in November. The timing of Woosnam’s announcement could not have been worse. To some within the sport it was totally inappropriate as it stole the limelight from the Kookaburras players and coaching staff.

Australia’s Kookaburras had just competed in their fifth Olympic Gold medal match, in their 17th Olympic appearance. They had lost by the merest of margins. Having drawn 1-1 with Belgium they went down in a shoot-out, the cruelest of ways to lose any match in any sport, but absolutely nothing to be ashamed of. Despite the disappointment the players and coaching staff had every right to be proud of their performance in light of the fact that they had played so few games in the past 18 months, and those games had only been against New Zealand.

The timing of the announcement was wrong. One close to the team labelled it “vindictive,” that may be going a stretch too far, but it certainly will have done little to restore trust between the board and the players. As a former international player with the Hockeyroos and someone who runs a sports consultancy business one would have expected more.

There are many who expected this resignation and that of other members of the board following the Independent review, so it comes as no surprise. Neither did the resignation of the CEO who quietly left the building last Friday. (The Resignation The Sport Had To Have)

Tied in with Woosnam’s announcement The Australian newspaper wrote that “It can also be revealed that HA (Hockey Australia) is planning on relocating their program from Perth to the east coast in 2024.”

The article went on to state, “That’s something we’re reviewing as part of our post-Olympic review as well,” Woosnam said. “People will make it all about location but, for us, it’s about what does world class look like? It’s actually more than the location, it’s the facilities, it’s the environment, career opportunities, support for the athletes, and 95 per cent of the cohort probably come from the east coast, so to have our program based on the west coast, is that the best thing for the program moving forward? Do we need to have the same program for men and women?”

Immediately one has to ask should the outgoing President of the Board be involved in such a process? In fact in light of the events of the past year the selection of key staff and new Board members surely should not be the responsibility of outgoing officials? Having announced their departure, should this now be left to those remaining with no involvement from the departing board members?

Ms Woosnam finally revealed that this was “something that came up recently in the Hockeyroos review is that we’re taking young girls out of their home environment and basing them on the other side of the country, is that providing the best and most conducive environment for them to perform?”

This is nothing new.

Australia for those on the outside is a very large and strange country. While the various states host sporting, arts or theatrical events and programs, many of which carry the unifying “Australian” name there are some state Governments who do not see the big national picture or the benefit of spreading such events across the nation. They go out of their way to steal events from the other states with financial promises or benefits to the organisers. All with the aim of trying to promote themselves as the Cultural or Sporting capital of Australia. While this may appear to be great on a local level, it is shortsighted in the long term.

Hockey is far and away the most successful Olympic team sport and over 36 years has endured and been productive. So where does this need to up sticks and move everything come from? Petty state jealousies, or interstate CEO’s and Board members trying to win favour with their State Politicians?

The Australian Institute of Sport was established back in 1980. It came into being in part due to Australia’s poor showing at the Montreal Olympic Games in 1976 when Australia finished 32nd on the medal tally table, won no Gold medals, and only one silver, in hockey. The Prime Minister of the day Malcolm Fraser, along with his Government realised how much success in the international sporting arena buoyed the nation as whole, especially come election time, it also helped with perceptions of the country overseas.

The hockey program was not established within the AIS family until 1984, and it was located in Perth. One of the main reasons that Perth was given the nod was due to the fact that following the 1976 Montreal Olympic Games hosting the hockey event on artificial turf, in 1979 the first water-based synthetic pitch to be laid in the Southern hemisphere was laid at the Western Australian Institute of Technology – now Curtin University.

One of the reasons that is constantly raised as to why the program must leave Perth, is because Western Australia no longer supplies the number of national players it has in the past. That is true. However will that always be the case, and if it changes back to a time when it is supplying greater numbers does that mean that the program should move again back to Perth?

The first thing that has to be acknowledged is that times have changed since 1984. People have changed since 1984. The cities around the country have changed since 1984, many have grown exponentially. To show this is the case in 1986 the population of Australia’s major cities were as follows: Sydney – 2,989,070, Melbourne – 2,645,484, Brisbane – 1,037,815, Adelaide – 917,000 and Perth – 895,710. By 2016 these had grown to Sydney – 4,398,491, Melbourne – 4,238,692, Brisbane – 2,065,799, Perth – 1,866,522 and Adelaide – 1,166,426. (Source: ABS, Census of Population and Housing 1986 and 2016). So the population in almost every state has almost doubled.

That brings with it a whole new raft of issues that need to be taken into consideration when running a High Performance program such as Hockey’s. Apart from the ability to live near the city and rental prices there is the issue of education

Most of those attending the High Performance program at this present time are tertiary students. So they need to be able to not only get to training and hockey related events easily, but also be able to attend to their studies. The travel times in Sydney and Melbourne with such large populations and traffic congestion would make it extremely difficult for those in the program to be able to fulfil both of those commitments without the stress and time it will take to get from one to the other. Even in Brisbane, if the program were to be based on the Gold Coast this would be an issue.

The added problem with many of these options is that the clubs themselves are also far more spread out than they are in Perth, which means more travel and time being eaten up.

There are currently relationships in place with the Western Australian universities and especially Curtin University to accept players who are part of the Hockey program into their courses. To set up new relationships on behalf of the players will take time, and there will be issues that will need to be ironed out. Issues that have already been addressed over time in Western Australia.

There have been rumours that the relationship between Hockey and Curtin University are not what they were, and that hockey is looking to move from its university base. Yet the only logical place for Hockey WA and the Hockey Australia High performance unit to move where they could still access all the similar benefits would be to the University of Western Australia’s McGilvray Oval where they could base themselves near the Western Australian Institute of Sport, and access their facilities and expertise.

Woosnam’s comments are very loose, “what does World Class look like?” Well that depends on what you are looking to create. It is like buying a house, you have to know exactly what you are looking for before you start looking, or the whole exercise is a complete waste of time? Are Hockey Australia looking at the set-ups in other countries around the world? If so which countries are being looked at and why? Ironically the majority of Hockey playing nations look at the Australian program as being one of the best and then tweak facets of that to suit their environment.

Woosnam talked about environment. Let me remind you that she said “it’s the environment, career opportunities, support for the athletes, and 95 per cent of the cohort probably come from the east coast, so to have our program based on the west coast, is that the best thing for the program moving forward?”

The environment was regarded as ‘toxic’ by the Hockeyroos at the end of 2020. Woosnam and her then CEO stated when issues were raised that there was not a problem within the Hockeyroos environment. This was not an issue that just cropped up suddenly, but one that had been festering for over a decade. Two of the clear findings of the independent report that was carried out were that the Board and the management were out of touch with the programs. So can the same Board be trusted to come up with a plan into what is the best environment for the players coaches and support staff?

One of the most logical things to have done post Olympics would be to move the new CEO and key staff to Western Australia so that they are in contact every day with those at the coal face; basing them in Melbourne makes next to no sense whatsoever. In fact this is a prime argument about location that rarely carries any sound business argument. There can clearly after the events of the past year be no doubt that the position of High Performance Director needs to be based where the program is. One of the findings when this debate about relocating the program has been raised previously is that it is easier to move an administration than it is to move a high performance unit. It is not only easier, it is also cheaper.

It appears that as much as the Board, based on Woosnam’s comments, want things to change, the more they want them to stay the same. All they want to do is move the location of the problem. Yet maybe the program itself needs to be looked at?

To be fair Woosnam was quoted as asking “do we need to have the same program for men and women?” That is probably the most pertinent comment she made in the article

Hockey Australia have a duty of care to all of their athletes. They have an even greater duty of care to those younger members of the program, and there would be an argument that this duty of care would fall under the responsibilities of in loco parentis, acting in the place of a parent.

It would appear that some athletes struggle more than others with being away from home, being away from that support network. This is especially true of the modern generation. It is not anyone’s fault, it is just a fact that times have changed. The ways of communicating have changed, as have the pressures and distractions.

Just as players in the past could afford to give up their time to train for the Australian team with no financial rewards, and would go out themselves to raise money to attend international tournaments, a realisation has to be that these players can not be expected to survive and be at their best for a meagre $150-300 a week. Which means that the whole scholarship format is another area that needs a great deal of scrutiny.

What has Hockey Australia done to try and minimise these issues for these players? With the amount of flying that the players, and staff were doing prior to the Covid Pandemic what was being done to negotiate with an airline or travel partner to enable either the parents a trip to Perth or the players a trip home? Or when the players were playing in their home states giving them more time at home? Remember these are not professional athletes. These are scholarship holders. They receive a minimal allowance, not pay, they receive no superannuation and no holiday pay, so would these things really be too hard to arrange? Especially if it made the athlete happier, which in turn will help their performance on the field of play and off it.

The biggest questions are what is Australia trying to achieve with the high performance unit? Depending on the answer to this question how much are the top players benefitting from being housed in one place for most of the year?

In days gone by the top players remained in their home state environments and played with their local clubs. They then came together for national camps for shorter periods of time in the build up to major tournaments. The program in Perth was used to develop the players underneath the Kookaburras and Hockeyroos programs. It paid dividends in 1997 when the Australian men’s under 21’s won their only Junior World Cup title. They lost the final in ’82 and 2005. The women’s team has not made the final of their event since 1997. In fact six of that men’s 1997 team went on to claim Gold at the Athens Olympics.

The same number that won bronze at the 2016 Junior World Cup were part of the team that won silver in Tokyo. Which may say that it makes no difference.

Yet one feels with the right people in the coaching roles in all of the State institutes working with the senior players to ensure that they remain in peak form, and the High Performance department working with the up and coming players, making them better and preparing them for international hockey, the talent pool will become bigger and that can only benefit Australia. Also having the top players back playing for their clubs will help those states grow the game.

Throwing this subject out in the media on the day the Kookaburras returned with their silver medal was bad-timing, and someone of Woosnam’s experience should not be making such mistakes.

Yet this is how it has now been communicated to those in power at Hockey Western Australia. Ms Woosnam claimed that she “didn’t realise that the article was going to print” on that day and also claimed that she had been “misquoted” on the issue of the High Performance relocation. If this is the case why has there been no official statement from Hockey Australia stating this to be the case?

There is no doubt that this program needs to be reviewed, and it would be prudent to do that every so many years. There are a great many plusses to the program staying Perth. It has reaped a great deal of success over the years. Maybe that success has not been as obvious in the women’s program in terms of trophies, but as the independent review revealed this was in the main due to the issues within the program that were not addressed by those in charge over a long period of time. (Paying A Price For The Past?) Ask many of those involved in the program and very few complain about the program itself or its location, just the way it was run, and how in some cases they never were able to fulfil their potential. Which is what every athlete wants to do, and they want to show that by winning Olympic medals and World Cups.

Such a decision has so many parts attached to it. For it to be tossed into the media the way it was was either premeditated to stir the pot or incredibly irresponsible. Maybe this is proof that it is time for Ms Woosnam to step aside as President of Hockey Australia.

The one question that must continually be asked is will changing the location of the program improve the success of the program or as stated previously, simply change the location of the same problems?