IRISH HOCKEY HAS been here before. Rewind four years and the governing body was unable to fund a trip to the Champions Challenge tournament in Argentina.
The players took it upon themselves to spearhead a fundraising campaign. The hockey fraternity who, unwilling to even consider the prospect of pulling the plug, rallied together and put their hands in their pockets.
A matter of weeks and €45,000 later, Ireland finished third and embarked on the road to Rio.
Now, just four months out from becoming the first Irish team to compete at the Games in 108 years, the self-proclaimed ‘Green Machine’ find themselves in a similarly desperate situation.
After falling some €225,000 short of their sponsorship target, the onus has now been placed on the organisation and its players to find the finances to support their preparations for Rio.
“It’s a culmination of a few factors that we find ourselves sitting here,” captain David Harte tells The42.
“When the Irish Hockey association and our head coach went to the Sports Council and the Government and put a pitch to them to say this is the money we require in order to run our high performance programme for Rio, we came up short.
“As Irish hockey players we’ve learned to deal with this kind of distraction so it’s nothing out of the blue or nothing new to us. Last year, which was our most successful year, we still had to organise and fundraise ourselves.”
If truth be told, it’s a scarcely believable state of affairs. Despite the team’s unprecedented success and their impending appearance on the biggest sporting stage, no corporate sponsor has been enticed on board.
“If I had the answer I would tell you now and we’d hopefully have it solved months ago,” Harte says of the lack of sponsorship.
“I’m not entirely sure to be completely honest. As a player within the group, we’re just trying to focus on nothing but training and getting ourselves in the best physical condition of our lives to compete at the Olympic Games.
“What happens off the pitch we’re aware of, but to a certain extent we’re not entirely sure of the in-depth conversations and negotiations which are going on.
“You could say it’s a distraction but we always try and put a positive spin on it and it actually gets the group closer together and working together off the pitch too.”
At this stage, the ‘Obsessed’ campaign has raised close to €17,000. There is a long way to go and coach Craig Fulton admits it’s difficult to hide the frustration.
“I would be lying if I said it wasn’t frustrated,” he says. “It is lastminute.com and we tried to pull this off a lot earlier but it didn’t happen. It’s the reality of it and it’s where we are at.
“But we don’t want this to detract from the celebration of qualifying because sometimes it does.”
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With 22 games between now and the Games, Ireland’s preparations are continuing uninterrupted. The programme has been signed off but funding is needed to ensure that, when all is said and done, Hockey Ireland doesn’t find itself thousands of Euro in the red.
“Believe me when I say every single one of the group and squad are so grateful for every euro and every cent which is being put our way and it’s not an ideal situation but it is what it is,” Harte adds.
“We need to get outside the hockey public. There’s a certain amount of frustration but also a sense of realism because we are at the stage where hockey within Ireland is still a minority.
“What we’re trying to do is get out the fact that Ireland does have a senior men’s hockey team preparing for the Olympics.”
Ireland will play four fixtures against Korea in Dublin later this month while Canada arrive on these shores for four games in June. The home fixture list concludes in July with two outings against Netherlands in Cork.
“We’ve worked incredibly hard to get here and now we have to ensure that our players are in the best possible shape and prepared in every way to compete with the world’s best at an Olympic Games,” Fulton concludes.
You can visit the fundraising page here.
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Great going by both athletes. Very well done.