Back in April, our chairman, Phillip Wheater, published details of the proposals to host one of the new England Hockey Talent Academies as well as becoming an England Hockey accredited Talent Centre.

April briefing

Members were invited to provide feedback and comments.

Since then the Talent Centre and Academy committee has been working hard, in conjunction with the England Hockey teams, to plan for the implementation of the Talent Academy and the accreditation as a Talent Centre.

The plan was to brief members again at the club AGM but as the AGM will now not take place until early August this note is intended to bring members up to date at the same time as the board of directors is being asked to authorise the signing of the Talent Academy agreement between the club and England Hockey.

To recap:

(a) England Hockey will no longer run Performance Centres and instead clubs will run Talent Academies for approximately 25 girls and 25 boys aged 15-18;
(a) Old Loughtonians Hockey Club Limited has been selected as one of 17 clubs in England to host an Academy;

Ikford Recorder article

(c) during August and September the club will be running assessment days to select those who will be invited to attend the Talent Academy;

(d) the Talent Academy will run for much longer than Performance Centres with training sessions every Monday night for not only the hockey season itself. Clubs have expressed concerns about the length of time players will be playing hockey (especially where they have other sport commitments) and concerns about the commensurate annual fee (3 times Performance Centre fees for clubs to break even). England Hockey are however expecting those attending to commit primarily to hockey with a view to improving the standard of international teams and clubs playing in Europe and believe it is essential for those attending to do so year round as their primary sport;

(e) the catchment area for the Talent Academy will run from East London to the East Essex coast and into Hertfordshire. This is the current list of clubs provisionally in the
area.

Provisional Catchment Area

We will work with catchment area clubs to try to give Talent Academy players both the benefit of training at OLHC and playing for their home club. Whilst, inevitably, some players will be attracted to the club by the related Talent Academy (and we hope a number of our own colts will be selected) this initiative is not intended as a recruitment plan in any way and, on the contrary, ManCom wishes to avoid any disruption to the club by bringing in Talent Academy players to the detriment of long term members. The club is also wedded to the ideal of having many strong local clubs rather than one dominant magnet club;

Next steps

Jay Fox has been leading the initiative and has been the main contact with England Hockey.

England Hockey have asked us to resubmit a budget based on discussions between clubs to try to standard standardise fees. Thanks to Jay for preparing this and to our Finance Officer, Sanjai Patel, for reviewing it.

We then need to sign the Talent Academy agreement itself which has been negotiated at length with England Hockey. This will initially run for a three year period unless terminated early.

The management of the Talent Academy will be independent of the management of the club. Jay Fox will be chairman, Cindy Falconer will be Welfare Officer and the lead coaches will be Chris Gladman and Lee Ible and they will manage the Talent Academy together with a fifth independent member who we are in the process of asking to act.

Separate new assistant coaches are being recruited and we hope they will also be able to assist in club roles.

This is a major step for the club but whilst uncertainties remain those involved believe that it is the right thing for the club to volunteer to run and help develop. We will be working closely not only with England Hockey and clubs in our catchment area but also with neighbouring Talent Academies such as Cambridge City, Hampstead & Westminster and Reading to develop outstanding training and playing opportunities for academy participants. We are in good company with many other clubs with excellent junior sections and it is an accolade to have been selected. A lot more hard work will be needed to run the Academy but we hope and anticipate that the proposal will be in the long term interests of the club and members as a whole.

If anyone has any questions please ask any member of the Talent Academy committee.