In 2005 Surbiton Hockey Club in Surrey had an established club operating out of Sugden Road with 300 members, which included 110 junior members.
Interestingly, when you visit the website you don’t immediately see a section detailing the club history, but what smacks you in the face is an intriguing section called “The Future is Now”.
This is interesting to see, the club quite clearly have a vision which is evident within 2 seconds of clicking onto their website.
The club recently affiliated through the annual process to EHB and the numbers they submitted were staggering, not least because they are the biggest hockey club in England, but because their rate of growth has been so large and as far as I am aware, they haven’t miraculously built a new pitch on site since I last visited 3 months ago. So what changed for them to see over 150 new members in a season?
I caught up with Brett Garrard (Director of Hockey) after a community coaching session, whilst he was on his way to coach the senior ladies, about the changes the club have made since 2005 to see over 1,000 members sign up to SHC this season.
The piece of paper I wrote my notes on resembles well, nothing recognisable. The amount of information, schemes and insight Brett offered could fill reams of paper.
In an attempt to make sense of the vast amount of notes, I’ll start with how Brett describes the starting point.
He started in his role as Director of Hockey 3 years ago with a clear vision. Within 3 years he wanted to see the colts section hit 500 and add a new mens and womens senior team every three years.
The starting point apparently was quite simple. To offer value for money.
Over time, the club developed a motto, which is firmly embedded throughout the club – “Every player matters” this is quite clear to see when you visit the club and see the person who oversees the Colts sessions, watching every senior game on a Saturday and integrating junior members into the club. There is a feeling that whilst Richard “Ratman” Alexander of England and GB is wandering around, he is in fact no more important than the girls who do a great job in the bar. To be honest, they probably have the edge on him as controllers of the beer flow.
We would be in danger of this article becoming a novel, so I try to succinctly talk about some of the key points which Brett believes accelerated the club from being good to excellent.
Young People
The vision of taking hockey to the community and not expecting the community to magically turn up at the gates of Sugden Road pre empted the recent work of Sport England in identifying that community groups might quite like sport to be taken to them and not the other way around. This was also quite handy considering that Surbiton HC didn’t have an infinite amount of space and utilising community areas allowed rapid expansion of membership.
Fast forward 3 years, and I’m now looking at a website called Suburban Hockey, complete with it’s own sponsor. Suburban Hockey aims to bridge the social gap by taking hockey to children in a wider community and by offering opportunities for more children to enjoy the sport at club level in the future. The number of young people touched by SHC has far extended the aim to see 500 colts involved and is pushing 650. The strong link the club has developed with the community and the schools mean that there is a clear pathway for young people to enter in to club life. For those who don’t want to take that step, they are happily accommodated in satellites.
I wonder if it matters where kids play hockey, or is it about kids playing hockey where they want to play hockey? If that is the school playground or leisure centre down the road, who are we to argue? As long as the are picking up a stick and having fun, and have opportunities to join the club if they wish, I can’t see that it matters.
Adults
One of Brett’s ideas a few years ago was to run two programmes called “Learn to Play” and “Re learn to Play”. The former for ladies from the community to have a go at hockey in a safe environment with people similar to themselves in terms of interests. The latter programme was aimed at the parents of the colts who haven’t picked up a stick in a few years. We now of course know this programme as Back to Hockey, and the model has been replicated across the country with a tweak here and there.
The effect of these programmes saw new womens teams entered into the leagues, at a level that suits the women who want to play. They also have a large squad as many of them dont wish to train twice a week and play week in week out. They have families and like the flexibility this set up affords them.
The men who became involved were integrated into the new teams formed, and for those who decided that wasn’t for them formed a 6 a side league which take place at the club every week followed by a beer or two in the bar afterwards.
The club also formed strong links with the local university which resulted in sharing facilities and subsequently players training with the club, and now playing within teams. The club also provides coaches and expertise to the University helping them to progress with their own hockey vision and we realise that many graduates stay in the area after they finish their studies.
Raising standards and offering value for money
None of the areas SHC have developed have happened by chance. The original mission of offering value for money dictated that the club needed to offer high quality coaching and administration. They invested a large amount of time in getting the right people into the right positions. Volunteers have been integral to SHC, and I have had the pleasure of working with some of them over the last couple of years. I wouldn’t even know where to start in describing Gill Griffiths who is the (Membership and Admin - the glue that sticks everything together). Her organisational skills are phenomenal. Keith Wallis looked after the recent resurfacing of the pitch, and gained planning permission for lights for the second pitch which has turned the club around in terms of maximising pitch space during the dark evenings.
The club has recently received Sportsmatch funding to run a programme called “Jump Start Hockey” with this money they will be able to increase the numbers of coaches and provide additional training equipment so further driving up numbers. They will look to work with young coaches and umpires to create a sustainable future.
Did Surbiton get everything right? No, but every mistake is a learning opportunity.
I asked Brett if he was going to give other clubs who wanted to better themselves advice, what would he say? He firstly was very clear in stating that all clubs are different and no one model fits, he said they learnt a great deal from the journey, some things worked and some didnt. I think it’s really important that although these guys are a large club any club regardless of their size or location can take any part of the development Surbiton have looked at and apply it in their own way. They didnt get everything right, and they feel that they still have a long way to go.
Brett stated that the main piece of advice would be to make sure there is plenty of support – this certainly hits home at SHC. Everyone is involved in some small way, some in big ways. Too many times I hear from clubs who are really struggling as they have one or two excellent volunteers, but ultimately the workload is too high. A job shared is a job halved as they say.
The second piece of advice Brett gave was around a clear vision. His, and the clubs vision wasn’t anything spectacular – offering value for money and every player matters are pretty simple statements.
We recently conducted a piece of work which involved visiting hundreds of clubs, large, small, growing, shrinking to establish why the good clubs were good and why some clubs were struggling – the overwhelming area that stood out was that the majority of clubs who were struggling had very grand aims and those who were doing well were taking small simple steps to better themselves. There isn’t anything wrong with aiming high, but perhaps we at EHB need to do more help clubs to identify the small steps. We have a starting point with the Grow Your Own programme and it would be interesting to see if any of the little steps provided there were anything that SHC covered on their journey.
For me, the most interesting part of the conversation with Brett was right at the end, where he briefly mentioned getting the ladies 1s promoted to the premiership and the men qualifying for Europe. It was a rarity to hear so little about the performance section of the club, and whilst we all know that profile can be built upon the successes at those levels, it was refreshing to not have to delve to hear about development. Also interesting to note, I don’t believe that the word “winning” was mentioned once in our conversation, somewhat ironic from an ex International captain and a club who experiences winning regularly.
Is winning important? Of course it is, life is tangled up in winning and losing and whilst I believe in the lessons winning and losing can teach it was a pleasant experience to hear from a club who value every member in the club in equal measures regardless of age, gender, winners or losers.
Most surprisingly, Brett ventured at the end that he would be really happy to talk to any club out there about any aspect of developing themselves. He and the club clearly believe in hockey and have a desire to see hockey in England flourish. He was very honest about what didn’t go well for them and the lessons they learnt along the way, and if those experiences can help others he is happy to share.
