Is Resentment The Cause Of Hostility?

These are confusing times, and there is no doubt that the world is a very different place. Priorities have changed.

As many hockey fans will be aware there has been plenty of fur flying since the winners of the FIH Hockey Stars Awards 2020-21 were announced and it was revealed that every finalist associated with India ensured a clean sweep of the awards.

Belgium Hockey aired their disappointment at the results on social media, which was understandable when their side had just won it’s first ever Olympic Gold medal. Whether this was the appropriate way is another matter. Unfortunately now the sport faces more adverse publicity as the Hockey India President Gyanendro Ningombam has officially complained to the International Hockey Federation about their public comments.

The Indian press has reported that the letter of complaint states, “The objections on behalf of Belgium Federation for 2021 winners needs to be carefully examined by the FIH Governance Panel for what is considered by myself as a case of discrimination/racial discrimination.” These are very serious allegations.

It is understandable that many in India have been hurt by the comments made publicly by players and associations, but were those comments truly racist? Clearly many in India feel that they were.

There is no doubt that Mr Ningombam is right when he asks for the matter to be looked at by the FIH Governance Panel, as for a number of years since the public has been invited to cast a vote some of the honour attached to these awards has been lost, and they have become more of a popularity contest. A contest that many of the National Associations have bought into, by posting their nominees on their social media platforms and asking their members and fans to vote. That promotion is an active endorsement of the process.

Many National Associations promoting the voting in this way assume that their followers will simply vote for their national player, however many hockey fans are far more discerning and will actually think who genuinely deserves to win the award based on their performances in a global, a team and a personal context.

The current system is flawed. The Member Associations by their actions have endorsed this flawed system. That is not the fault of any Indian player or fan. So it is unfair to blame them.

It is worth looking back over the past five years of these awards. In 2017 and 2018 there was no Indian player nominated in any category. In 2019 there were three Indian players nominated, one each in the Young Player of the year categories and one in the Male Player of the year. In that year there were five outstanding players nominated in both the men’s and women’s rising star category and as opposed to three in 2020-21. The Indian players picked up all three awards. Captain Manpreet Singh winning the male player of the year award, Vivek Prasad the male Rising Star award and Lalremsiami the female Rising star award. There were few if any complaints.

Only those who saw the actual votes can determine whether a warning sign was there, that should an Indian player be nominated their chances of winning was going to be higher. The votes in 2019 were allocated as follows: “Votes from National Associations – which will include some international athletes and coaches votes – will count for 50% of the overall result, while fans and players (25%) as well as media (25%) will make the other half of the votes.” The question here is why only “some” International players and coaches? Surely the FIH has a data-base of all the players and coaches from the past year, in which case why not contact all?

It should be made clear that the ‘players’ referred to are your everyday player, not just the elite players.

This year this changed to “Votes from National Associations, represented by their respective national captains and coaches, will count for 50% of the overall result, while fans and players (25%) as well as media (25%) will make the other half of the votes.”

Yet as we have seen in an interview with outgoing Japan Men’s coach Siegfried Aikman with Sports Team of India, he was not asked to vote as a coach. He is quoted as saying “I was coach at the Olympics but I wasn’t asked to vote officially according the process as is now public. I voted individually as a fan means that my votes were counted as fan votes. Maybe other coaches did too.” Yet as a coach of a team at the Olympic Games which was one of only two major tournaments played in 2021 surely all of those at the Olympic Games would have been asked to vote as they would have seen the players at close quarters? Siegfried Aikman is also one of the FIH-World Academy certified trainers of coaches, so he would be expected to be someone who knows a good player and whether they have performed well.

As mentioned previously, in the past many of the top players advised that they were not contacted to vote by their national associations, and like Siegfried Aikman were left to vote via the public link. Of course if people had multiple email addresses they could have voted more than once.

The big concern to many was the lack of votes cast by the National Associations, something that it is reported that Mr Ningombam raised in his letter.

The FIH revealed that in Africa only 11 out of 25 Member Associations voted. In Asia there were 29 out of 33, Europe only 19 out of 42, Oceania 3 out of 8 and Pan America only 17 out of 30. That means that only 79 Member Associations had their head coach and captain vote out of 138. That is only just over 50% of Member Associations. Even during something as important as the Presidential election 16 nations failed to vote. They did not abstain, they were not even on line when the virtual vote took place!

This lack of votes from the National Associations is in spite of FIH CEO Thierry Weill stating in an interview conducted by the FIH that “Firstly, we made it compulsory for the National Associations that their votes should come from their national team coaches and captains.” If it was compulsory, why were there so many who did not vote, and what will be the penalty for not voting when it was compulsory?

Just as they did with the FIH Presidential elections the FIH should name the countries that failed to vote. Hopefully the national coaches and captains who did not vote are also asking their administration why they were not asked to vote, and if a vote was submitted who made the decision on whom to vote for? This apathy once again is not the winners’ fault nor is it India’s fault. It is however a very sad indictment on the member nations. It would appear that the system is broken, or that faith in that system is no longer there. (Voting Rights or Wrongs?)

One of the things that is strange is that the European nations seem to be getting far more hot under the collar about the annual awards than they were about the outcome of the FIH Presidential elections, which to many on the outside is a very strange state of affairs.

Although ultimately the two are intertwined.

During the Presidential election each member nation had one vote. In the player of the year voting it would appear each member association had two votes, one for the coach and one for the captain.

The media presumably all had one vote, the question is how did people qualify for a media vote were they all legitimately media?

Presumably the winner was determined as per the Press release from the FIH, the athlete or coach that had the largest percentage of the votes submitted was the winner. Are percentages really the way to go? (The Dawn of a New Rivalry?)

If the same format is in place when we have the public vote and it falls back on the fans and the players, then clearly the largely populated countries, or those where hockey is a regular news item are obviously going to attract a higher number of votes than a smaller nation.

One feels that if this was broken down by country, if ‘Player A’ out of the five nominated has the highest percentage of votes they receive that country’s vote. If ‘Player B’ has the highest percentage in another country they receive that country’s vote. Then you simply add up the single votes. The other option is if it was split into regions, as per the Confederations, if there were five nominees then the votes could have been shared 5, 4, 3, 2 and 1 based on the percentages. The player with the highest votes would pick up five votes the one with the lowest, one vote. These would then be added up from the various Confederations to determine an overall winner from the fans and players votes Although again this system will be skewed in favour of the higher populated nations.

The current feeling is that the large population in India had the ability to sway the vote purely due to the nation’s vast population participating in the vote. Something that was totally within the rules. It would be interesting to have a breakdown on the actual votes rather than percentages as well as a breakdown on votes from the media in terms of how many came from each country.

Once again the spotlight is on the Member nations and their voting rights. There are a number of nations in which Hockey is an established sport. Where there are players participating in the sport in the tens of thousands, and where there are numerous hockey clubs. Yet in this instant their vote is the same as a nation that has a few hundred players. Is that right?

Many sporting constitutions are weighted when it comes to clubs and their vote or votes. These are frequently determined by the number of teams that they put out. The trouble with this is in a country such as Australia where funding is based on participation numbers is that those numbers are fudged to make the figures look better. For example if there are two different formats of the same game and a player plays both they will be counted twice to make the figures look better. So such a system would have to be based on an audited number of clubs or participants. A failure to provide that audit before a date prior to the Congress would reduce your Association’s vote to one.

Some may argue that the big hockey nations already hold too much sway and that such a system would favour them too much. They may be right, but surely if they have the strength and the numbers those numbers deserve more say? Their counter argument would be to say look at the timing of international matches and how they interrupt their domestic competitions, do they really have that much say or control?

Then there is the issue of Membership fees. What are the Member Associations paying to be a part of the FIH? Once again it appears that the nations that are higher up the world rankings are paying a much higher fee than those at the lower end of those rankings. In fact the word is that some countries are not paying any membership fees at all to the FIH, yet they have the same voting rights as those paying a fee. This situation is believed to have come about following the International Olympic Committee’s threat to drop Hockey from the Olympic Games. The call to the Confederation heads was to go out and bring in new members, no matter how they did it. Hockey needed to boost it’s Membership numbers. Yet the end result now is a gross imbalance when it comes to voting on important issues, those paying the bulk of the membership fees are heavily outnumbered by those who are not.

So anomalies when it comes to voting on issues are not a new problem within the FIH. The FIH Governance Panel should be looking at and addressing the matter of voting on all FIH issues and bringing them all into line so that everyone is clear on the structure and how it works. Transparency and clarity are the key.

The problem here is that on a panel made up of five people, one is employed by the FIH and three are FIH Board members. Only one member of the panel is independent. Rightly or wrongly this can lead to a perception that the Governance panel will not rule against the organisation, and that the panel’s members are too close to the issues that are referred for judgement.

The Governance Panel are placed in a very awkward position when it comes to Mr Ningombam’s official complaint, as one is a Board member who was part of the selection panel for the FIH Player of the Year Awards, another is also a Board member and also the CEO of the Asian Confederation. The Chair of the panel is another Board member and the President of the Asian Hockey Confederation, and “has been a long serving official of the Japanese Hockey Association,” an Association it would appear did not ask its head coach to vote. This is an extremely awkward situation, as Hockey India of which Mr Ningombam is President is a Member Nation of the Asian Confederation, and the Member nations elect the board and the President, and the Board appoints the CEO. In situations such as this one would expect all three members of the panel would have to announce a conflict of interest and withdraw from the matter. However that would leave just two people, and one of those is an employee of the FIH. This is why it is vital that such Panels are made up of independent people.

To exacerbate the angst surrounding the voting the FIH CEO was quoted in their own internal interview as saying “this process – as long as it is implemented by everybody – should work.” These are hardly words that instil confidence in the current system.

Mr Weill was also quoted as saying in relation to India’s clean sweep of the awards “This is not only good for India – where most of these fans are coming from – but for the growth of our sport overall and therefore the whole hockey community!” Unfortunately this is a gross misreading of the situation, and it would be good to hear how this result is going to grow the sport overall.

Hockey is supposed to be a global sport, but the feeling amongst many, and it is not racist, is that the FIH has channelled too much of its attention on India and trying to take money from India. Yes, India was a key component when Hockey was threatened with Olympic exclusion, as their failure to qualify for the Beijing Olympics saw no television station wanting to purchase the coverage. It was vital that India became a force again, and over the past decade or more there have been a number of key players who have contributed to that fact. There is also no denying that most Hockey fans globally love to watch India and Pakistan play, as they were the two teams that brought the game to life. Sadly it appears very little is being done to help Pakistan at this point in time.

Yet the tunnel-vision focus by the FIH on India is damaging the sport as was borne out in the reaction to the results of the awards. Next month the Junior Men’s World Cup is due to be hosted in India. This will be the third time in a row that India has hosted this tournament. In two years time India will host its third Men’s World Cup finals out of the last four tournaments. The last time the tournament was hosted in Pan America was 1978 and in Oceania in 1994; both have hosted the women’s event since then in 2010 and 2002 respectively. The FIH did not hide the reason for returning to India, it came down to money. However is this going to grow the game? What damage is it doing the game in other regions. The backlash over the awards is a result of that resentment. (World Cup A Game Of Snakes and Ladders)

If both parties are serious about growing the game, why not take the Women’s World Cup to India? Especially when you consider that Asia has only hosted the event once and that was back in 1983! The Indian Women have been a beacon of light to all women and all female athletes in India following their Olympic performance. Here is a truly magnificent opportunity to grow that side of the sport in India. Yet will it benefit the sport commercially?

This is the tough balancing act that the FIH has to navigate. Sometimes you have to take a financial hit to do what is best for the sport as whole, to help it grow. Good management will plan for such an opportunity. As stated previously if you keep going back to the same well eventually the well runs dry. By the time that happens many have already stopped making that journey. They have moved elsewhere.

The backlash was not against the players or against Hockey India, it was however born out of a perception that has grown in recent years. India was the only nation to have an athlete nominated in every award category. In every category except for the Rising Star award for men, the Gold and silver medallists and even the bronze medallists in the Women were defeated. While it is not unusual for the Olympic Gold medallists to not claim an award history has shown that usually if they miss out the silver medallists will claim the award in an Olympic year. India has had nine nominations in the FIH Awards in 2019 and 2020-21 and has won all nine, as well as two coach of the year awards. The probability of winning every award that you are nominated for most will tell you is extremely unlikely.

As one writer wrote during the Apartheid era in South Africa, “hostility grows from separateness and isolation.” Both words mean ‘being kept apart from others,’ and unfortunately despite the understandable financial attraction that having these events in India brings, and no matter how well India hosts the events and creates a memorable atmosphere, many around the hockey world have become hostile at this time because they feel left out. Which begs the question were the comments on social media relating to the awards born more out of resentment than racism?

Thierry Weill’s closing words in his interview with the organisation he heads up finished with him saying “We will most likely create a Task Force to look at this. And I’m absolutely convinced that we will find a compromise which will ensure that the global hockey community celebrates these Awards in the future!” First of all no one wants a compromise, they want clarity and transparency as to the rules of voting and how those votes are tallied. There should be no need for a taskforce, as the FIH already has a Governance Panel. However the make-up of that Panel would appear to be compromised on an issue such as this, so maybe a new Panel needs to be formed.

What is evident is that the time is now to put in place clear, transparent and uniform structures that ensure the integrity of these votes and others within world hockey so that none come under scrutiny in the future. In addition the sport most become truly global once again and all playing nations feel that they are included.