Mooney#16 said:
The main stumbling block is funding for grass roots meaningful change. Because of the state of the GB programs the BOA offer zero funding to hockey and to the best of my knowledge lottery funding to grass roots projects is minimal to non existent. Hockey in this country has to want for change itself and that means inward investment from the top tier to start the whole wheel of change rolling. A persistent arms race in spending and imports at elite level means all funds go into players and owners pockets in effect. There is nothing left to be put back into the game. IHUK and the EIHA are littered with idiots who have failed the sport and their motives are all wrong and execution even worse. The EPL, NIHL develops average players at best with a push on success putting money into players pockets who have no right earning a wage from the sport rather than being spent on assisting prospects reach the pinnacle. They need to get tough on the veterans. A controversial position but a right one.
In short the Elite needs to provide funding to kick start the move for change. In time this can be added to by BOA / Lottery funding. The EIHA and IHUK need to scrap a NIHL tier for an U21 league. The other tier should be capped at U25 with 3 over age players allowed per team. Over 25 you are either in the EPL or playing rec. EPL should be unrestricted in age with three imports only.
Then the Elite should be 8 imports only. With two eliteleague CHL spots that would mean upwards of 30 GB players playing CHL hockey and competing at the highest (ish) level. That lends itself to a massive level of exposure for GB talent to improve. Like I say change is required whole sale but the opening step has to be with the money men of the EIHL.
First, someone must have listened to you because the EIHA have just announced that from next season the age groups for junior hockey has changed and they have fallen in line with the rest of the world. Also an U21 league is to start.
Second, the funding has always been a problem. The BOA will not provide any funding until the team qualifies for the Olympics. By the way they only missed out on qualifying for the Olympics by 1 or 2 games so to say the state of the national team is bad is a gross miss statement ! The GB senior team has a lot of players who are either Welsh born or who learned their trade playing for the Devils.
Third, the main problem in junior development is the fact that there are very few clubs that have good ex players as coach, as most want to coach at ENL or above but that is changing as there were a few ex Devils and a present Devil at the last coaching course run in Cardiff who have all said that they want to give back to the kids what they have learned which will be great if it is Cardiff where they decide to coach but first they must find out if they will be paid to do this. At the moment too many parents coach juniors and whilst it is great that these people give up their time to do this it must be said that this is not the same as having an ex player, who has been there and done it, coach the juniors.
Whilst you are quick to blame the EIHA they have done a million times more for junior development than the EIHL would ever do. The owners haven't yet grasped how good it would be for their business if GB had a team in the Olympics or Pool A as then the sport would gain more tv coverage thus hopefully leading to bigger crowds, imports and tv coverage of the league.
Lastly, I think the mix of duals and Brit born players in the GB senior team is about right and wouldn't like to see that changed and I also think going down to 8 imports in our league would kill the sport as there isn't enough quality Brits to support your request and if it wasn't for the GB Supporters club I doubt if GB would even have any teams.
