SA Hockey

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[Hockeyfan]

i love the country and would learn more about your hockey in SA.
who are the best internationals (men and women) at the moment in SA?

[gerard]

well count urself lucky.here in the pacific we want to play but lack the funds to go places.and even if we do there are australia,newzealand,argentina etc thats close by to us.we get such a hiding.but its a slow way to  improve.i think you should be happy cause you play more then most countries.

[KickTheKidS]

In my opinion the problem with sa hockey is the lack of support... Even at international level stadiums do not even half full. thus there is no money, thus the players cannot play only hockey. they have to do day jobs etc.

And also the lack of political support.

[Robert]

I think that hockey needs more exposure at developement level and to get that kind of exposure there must be facilities and coaches ready. Also, hockey should be shown on television so that there is a raised interest in the game. For all of these, there must be money.

IMO it's a pity that there is so much tampering and politics at national level about race etc. and disappointment when we lose when almost nothing is done for youngsters comming up. We will continue our current level of hockey untill school go-ers are developed.
Maybe one day we should scrap school sport and have club sport only - this would help in many sports other than hockey. Most of Europe does that.

[cr@zydude]

School sport should be kept, but hockey should get more priority at SA schools. At my school people do come to 1st team games, but it i sno where near the number of people that come to rugby games.

Also hockey should be televised. Supersport showing one magazine program a month is not enough.

[Goggs]

To reply to Robert's comment about dropping school sports... Have to say this would be a HUGE mistake. Sport at school in the UK was dropped as teachers weren't paid or recognised for facilitating it. Also schools sold off fields to generate income, marks became a priority and a fully rounded 'education' was dropped in favour of better grades, etc, etc. In my opinion, British sport suffered drastically as a result, as did general society when suddenly more kids were hanging out on the streets bored and with plenty of energy to cause trouble. OK, I'm not suggesting that the problems they are suffering in the UK with juvenile delinquency is all because school sports (and all other extra-curricular activities) were dropped, but I believe it has had a big contribution to the problem. However, the main point I was driving at was that British sport suffered when schools dropped sport and is only now on the road to recovery driven largely by the 2012 Olympics.

In South Africa I believe the impact to SA's international performance of dropping sport at school would be disastrous. In my experience, the only real drive for excellence is in school sport. There are exceptions, but I am talking in general. The competitiveness of inter-school competition drives funding for facilities and coaching staff, encourages the players to take it a lot more seriously and generally uplifts all aspects of the game. I find (again, I stress I am generalising) that clubs do not strive for excellence and always have issues with funding. To sum up really, the focus at club level is social far more than the hockey itself. At clubs people seem to want to come down, play the game and then bugger off. So much effort is put into just keeping the club going that there is very little left over for anything else.

As for the current issues in the sport in SA... Well, if Gauteng is anything to go by... there seems to be a whole generation of players missing who should be in their mid to late twenties now and be the driving force in the game. What I see at all levels of the game in Gauteng is the bunch of players I grew up with, now between 30 and 45 who are providing the experience and backbone to the current teams. We need the top 3 leagues to be filled with young, enthusiastic players and allow us oldies to "gracefully" drop to the lower leagues where we can play competitive hockey for fun. I know of 3 teams who have deliberately 'thrown' the last 4 games of a season in order to avoid promotion (or simply refused promotion) because they are too old to go into the league above.There is a small group of 20-30 year olds and then (the truly exciting part!!!) a huge group of young guys coming through from the schools. We're on the cusp of change within the sport (hopefully) where the youngsters coming through are going to start dominating the game locally and driving it in the direction they want to go.

One thing we, as interested parties, need to do going forward is to stop making excuses and blaming the government, hockey associations, media, lack of funds, etc, etc and get on with changing the sport from the inside. I know that the HA's make some horrific choices and politics interferes more than we'd like it to but moaning about it is NOT going to change anything. We could all start by supporting & talking to the HA's more and they will slowly realise the players, umpires, etc actually DO care about the game they play every weekend. As an example, our umpire co-ordinator tried damn hard to arrange an end-of-season meal for the province's umpires last year but had to cancel due to lack of interest from his own umpires! Apathy like that will kill the game.

[keeper11]

hey

i am from perth, australia

my school como secondary college went on a hockey tour there and we got back on wednesday just been.

the girls team was undefeated with some huge scores, and us boys struggled in some games.
we lost 4, drew 1 and won 3.

we faired ok seeing as it was the first time our team had played together before.


we went to joburg first for the st stithians hockey and rugby carnival and i think the boys finished 3rd beating the saints home team in the last game of the festival. the girls were on top.


after that we went to cape town and played and billoted with Paul Roos Gymnasium and Rondebosch(sorry about the spelling)


according to the billots after you finish school and 1st XI there is no were really to go from there until international etc.
is there other comps filling in that age gap?

thanks
kieron

[linksey02]

At the moment, i hope things will start to look up for SA hockey. In cape town we recently started the PrincessPro series, similar to the EHL, obviously a downscale version of it, but its a start.

Giles Bonnette has just been announced as womens national team coach, which is a awesome. Hopefully the women's game will evolve.

Like many of you have said the game in SA seems to lack that international flair and coaching, but hopefully that will change. We have a bunch of talented players but many don't get or take the opportunity to play overseas to gain that international experience, and from what i've heard is that many players remain and carry on practicing their trade overseas because A- the get treated better and B- they get paid.

Lets hope that Giles and Gregg Clarke can turn around SA hockey and get us winning again, put the structures in place to make turn our team from being ordinary to extraordinary, long road ahead but the players have it in them, a decent monthly stipend wouldn't hurt either.

[hockeyislife]

At school level all the schools we play use the hit the ball up the field as hard as you can tactics, which gets you nowhere, if you use the controll and pass method which is more organized and effective you are more likely to score goals, the problem at school level with SA hockey is the style of play in most schools.