Belvedere have dropped down from division one to division two for the upcoming season with captain Paul Hayes - in an interview with Southern Fried - saying that the club "may have ceased" if they stayed at the top level.
Catholic Institute (pictured), meanwhile, will remain in the top tier for the coming season following a meeting this evening
Spekaing about the voluntary drop, Hayes continued by saying: "It has probably been coming over the last couple of years - we’ve had dwindling resources on the player side, and in the last two years we’ve had a few people move away to Dublin and London.
“It hasn’t been great. We were quite lucky over the past couple of years, scraping results in the last two or three games of the season to keep us up.
“It is very disappointing, but we had to take stock. If we had stuck it out and been beaten 12-0 or 14-0 every week, even by the second teams, I think men’s hockey in Belvedere would probably have ceased.”
Catholic Institute, meanwhile, came back from the brink after a meeting this evening where the club's involvement at the top level was discussed.
If the Limerick side were to withdraw it would have left just the A and B sides of Cork Harlequins, C of I and Bandon left in the division.
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7 comments:
Update - Catholic Institute have decided to stay put, but will instead drop their second team down a division. Post has been amended to reflect this!
did anyone see 3 rocks group for ehl? terrasa and a belgium side leuve or something lik that, anybody heard of them? maybe 3 rock could get some help from stephen butler, justin , graham or joe as they all playd in belgium.
It seems that a couple of Belvedere's more prominent players have moved on to other clubs already.
Unless the underage boys is sorted out ci will be on their own.there is no direction from the munster branch,they dont have a plan for the future,the hockey schools are struggling ,its fine to have 30/40 12/13 years olds in a club but thats a baby sitting service that happens in all sports and clubs, but we loose them at 16/17 ,image there are only 4 schools at secondary boys playing hockey ,when there was a committee in munster looking after scools there were only interested in their patch and never wanted to develope the game outside of it,its 85% protestant game in munster and thats why the scools have a problem,thats why belevedere and other clubs are in trouble and let me tell you some of the big ones will be gone if action is not take by the branch who are afterall responsable for thr development of the game ,or are they????when was the last time a new boys sec school team appeared on the scene not in 30 years ,where are the development people are they in sec scools not as far as I can see
The provincial "development" officers don't seem to be doing anything constructive for hockey in Ireland. If you compare them to the provincial rugby development officers who have new rugby playing schools taking to the game every year. There is a huge mentality of minding your own patch will eventually destroy hockey in Munster.
Its not the Regional Development officers fault they are often bogged down by administration! I would be asking the national development officer how they plan to tackle these issues!
The problem as i see it in Munster is that the development officers are controlled by Dublin and their priorities are set by Dublin. Talent spotting an ever shrinking group of players and the computer work it entails.
They do not feed any information to the Branch.
Even the very successful coaching course was not attended by the develoment officer, whether he felt he should ahve had an invitation or was the fact that he was coaching his club side have anything to do with his non appearance.
I would think that the Branch feel it would be better for grass roots hockey to give a large sum of money to a large number of coaches and get them into organising the non hockey playing schools and thus get the numbers up and more people participating.
To coach hockey costs money but i think enough coaches, if given a good wage, would go to at least part time status, so as to coach in schools would, they would do just that.
I know of atr least 2 coaches who would give up their jobs to coach for the branch but they have bills to pay and it would take at least €60,000 euros each for them to give up their jobs and pay their bills. But what price do we put on the sport in Munster. Would this not be a better way to spend the money that the IHA has at its disposal.
We may or may not qualify for an important games but if we loose hockey in Munster what chance in the long run does the sport have throughout Ireland.
I think this is an issue that requires urgent attention from all who are involved in hockey as a sport. This is everyones problem who loves the game.
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