A discourse on the advantages of a club structure

As a non-American, given a unique opportunity to look in at the USFHA and the American hockey world in general, I viewed the recent announcement by USOC boss Norm Blake, with disappointment, but without the great strength of feeling expressed by Al Mattei, in the responding article.

Why so?

Well, it is always, of course, disappointing to see financial aid being siphoned away from the game we love, particularly in the case of the US, where, in my opinion, huge advances can be made by judicious use of fairly small amounts of cash. The US men’s side is on the verges of winning its way back into the Olympic Tournament, despite the supposedly shallow pool of resources available to it, and just reaching the big competition is achievement enough to be proud of, as a nation.

However, my disappointment was tempered by the viewpoint of a different nation, with different standards.

I have been playing club-level hockey for fifteen years. I have paid, in club subscriptions and other dues, about $150 a year, in order to play. Additionally, weekly “match fees” are a ubiquitous occurrence in the English club hockey scene. Last year, I was paying about $7 or $8 per match, in addition to the yearly fees.

I, and many like me, did this, week in, week out, over season after season, because we love the game. It seems to us to be a small price to pay for the privilege of running out onto the field with ten friends and competing against a like-minded team, each Saturday.

I admit, there are times when one has to really wonder why one is doing this, and paying for the privilege, but these times are vastly outweighed by the enjoyment we all get out of the game.

It is in this way that the EHA (English Hockey Association) funds itself: through club subscriptions, indirectly paid by the grass-roots players. This has its advantages.

Firstly, the national team is directly funded by the clubs and by their members. This gives grass-roots players a proprietary interest in the team. Secondly, the EHA is run by hockey players, for hockey players, and Olympic Committees have no ability to tell us how to organise and run our game. This is a direct result of financial independence. Finally, the strong club structure means easy access for anyone interested in becoming involved in the game, in whatever capacity. Players, umpires, organisers and all the other people necessary to run the national programme come from and through the grass-roots clubs.

It is small clubs, such as mine, that involve the young players, and provide the basic coaching to bring them up to county or regional representation level. From there, a regional system, run by a representative group from the clubs, will take the players on to possible national representation, at which point, the national associations (still representative of the clubs) take over.

At every level, and at every age group, there is access to competitive hockey. The importance of this cannot be stressed highly enough. Competition brings the best out in players, and stretches our abilities. Playing with and against better, more experienced players is not a substitute for high-quality coaching, but it provides a different aspect and different stimuli that encourage development in ways that coaching alone cannot.

Equally, there are those who for various reasons do not take up hockey until after their school years. The club system encourages them to play, develops their abilities, and provides a dragnet to pull in players who may have been missed through the youth system.

The point is that the hockey world in the States is big enough to support itself, and by basing everything it does on club hockey (instead of the focus on high-school and collegiate sport), it widens its appeal to include all those people who were overlooked by the school and youth systems.

I cannot, off the top of my head, think of a good hockey example, but soccer, which runs in a similar manner to hockey on England, provides an ideal illustration. Back in the 1980’s, there was a young man of about 24 or 25 years old, who had never made it past 16, at school, and was working in a local factory. He enjoyed his soccer, though, and played for the local pub team on Sunday mornings. He showed great talent as a goal-scorer, and regularly topped the Sunday league scorers’ charts.

One day, by chance, a talent scout from, I believe, Fulham (then a second division club), was walking his dog in the park where this young man’s team were playing. He immediately spotted the player’s ability, and signed him up for Fulham.

A season later, he was transferred to Arsenal, for a huge fee, and he was picked straight away for the first team, and Premiership soccer. It wasn’t long before that player was representing his country, as he did, on and off, for the next ten years. He retired from playing recently.

The player’s name was Ian Wright.

This story shows, graphically, that some of us develop as sportsmen and women long after our school days. Without a strong club network in the game of soccer, Ian Wright would never have been playing in that park on that Sunday morning, and the world would never have known his incredible ability at scoring goals.

His story is far from unique; by the way, it’s just the best known. It is these Sunday morning players who support English soccer. They are the unsung heroes. Without small clubs like these, the whole professional league structure would fall, because they would lose their supply of quality players. It is no accident that the governing body, the Football Association (FA), pumps large amounts of money into supporting these clubs.

Equally, the many small clubs and pub teams, up and down the country, provide a huge source of revenue for the FA. They have the advantage of promoting the world’s most popular sport, as well as the British nation’s, but the same principles apply to any sport.

Through this simple means, the more players you attract to the game, the more money the governing body can make, and therefore, the more you’ll have to spend on improving your game, your coaching, your umpiring, etc. And, of course, once you get this snowball rolling, there’s no stopping it!

The better you get at the sport, the more players you will attract, which raises even more revenue, to improve your standards still further.

British hockey went through this process a few years ago. When I started playing, it was at school (because I’d been kicked out of the school rugby team!), but I was quickly involved in a local club side. The club was small, running two men’s and one ladies’ sides.

Shortly afterwards, Great Britain sent an underrated side to the 1988 Olympic Tournament, where, to everybody’s surprise, they won the bronze medal. By the end of the following season, that same small club (and comparatively, it was still small) was running five men’s sides and two ladies’, and still having difficulty finding games for everyone who wanted to play. The junior section was born, and the whole club went from strength to strength.

Unfortunately, with the recent decline in the fortunes of our national side, interest has waned, and clubs are starting to feel the economic pinch, again. What this is intended to illustrate is that yes, it takes success at the top level to really get things going, but you must already have the infrastructure in place to take advantage of any boom in interest in order to capitalise properly.

My bottom line is: why see this ridiculous statement of Norm Blake’s in such negative tones? Look at it as an opportunity.

Finally, the destination of US hockey is fully and completely in the hands of those people most interested in making it succeed: US hockey players.

Set systems in place that raise revenue internally. Spread the net wide in the search for new players. Make your sport attractive to people who have never thought about playing any sport, let alone hockey. Who knows what gems you might turn up?

The next Floris Jan Bovelander or Jane Sixsmith might be sitting on her couch, in Anytown, USA, wondering what to do with her Saturdays, watching baseball! You have an opportunity to turn spectators into participators, you have a good reason to do it (money), and it can only help improve the game of hockey, both here in the States, and worldwide, because international hockey can only be stronger for the addition of a strong United States side.

Jon Clutterbuck

Washington, DC