Australian hockey needs a coaches association

It is time in Australia. We need a professional hockey coaches association.

We must follow the lead of every other sport in this country and do it.

There are several reasons why it is necessary to set up a professional hockey coaches association.

Hockey coaches in this country need a body where they can share ideas and resources and work together for the betterment of the sport as a whole.

The hockey coaching accreditation process in this country is not as good as it could be, and if we had this association they could take over the processes from Hockey Australia, allowing Hockey Australia to focus on the bigger picture.

The association would be able to represent coaches and help them with areas such as contracts.

The association could establish a proper insurance and superannuation scheme for all hockey coaches which we so desperately need.

So with this in mind, what sort of form would this association take in terms of its structure?

I propose that we have a National Executive.

This would be made up of one representative from each state, they would then elect a President, and appoint a CEO or General Secretary that would run the association and speak for the association from day to day.

Each state would also have a small office, which would include a state executive led by a State President and State CEO or Secretary who would speak on matter within that state.

This body would also be responsible for raising the professional standards of coaches, and running professional development for all coaches. I believe the time is now it is a must and need to happen sooner rather than later.

I call on my fellow coaches across Australia lets join together and make this happen. We need to get organised, we need to work together, we need to support each other. We are the only ones who know how hard this gig is, we have to stop working in isolation from each other, we have to support each other.

Let’s bring this on. Let’s create better standards of hockey coaching in this country.

Let’s get hockey clubs to improve how they treat us.