GB President & Performance Director visit Wales
Two gold medal winning Olympians from the Great Britain team of 1988, Richard Leman and David Faulkner, addressed a select hockey audience at the Welsh Institute of Sport on Monday last, on the eve of the announcement for the 2008 GB hockey squads for Beijing.
As President and Performance Director of GB respectively, they were in Cardiff to talk about the critical building blocks in getting to 2008 and how those will be taken forward for 2012. The audience of the WHU Board, staff, national coaches, managers and representatives from our 3 national league clubs asked some challenging questions and were impressed with the clarity of purpose and thinking.
The Home Nations have developed a much stronger relationship through the GB Framework Agreement signed 2 years ago. Wales has a key role to play in the delivery of that agreement and it was no co-incidence to note that all the work in the last 15 months to take coaching forward and in developing the player pathway in Wales are precisely what GB would have hoped for. This will give both athletes and coaches the best chance of reaching the top in years to come. The GB remit is elite performance and the enablers are commitment, conditioning, coaching and competition. However,the need to develop and strengthen grass roots hockey is a priority for Wales and we also have a very strong focus on Club and junior development programme,but we must also continue to provide a strong competitive environment both domestically and internationally.
Wales Under 21 and Senior teams compete in the Celtic Cup over the next 2 weekends after which the under 21's compete in Europe. The Under 18's will be competing against England, Scotland and Ireland in Cardiff at the end of July. Then we turn our eyes to the Olympics and supporting Sarah Thomas with a longer term focus on the Senior Europeans next year when Wales host the Men's competition in Wrexham.
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