– Niall Kelly reports from the Olympic Hockey Centre, Rio de Janeiro
GUT-WRENCHING. AGONISING.
The first two words that sprang to mind as David Harte tried to sum up Ireland’s defeat against Argentina on Friday night and the end of the Green Machine’s Olympic adventure.
Those emotions could just as easily apply to the campaign as a whole. On the biggest stage, Ireland came up just short — not once, not twice, but three times.
Three one-goal defeats against three superior teams. The fine margins between success and failure.
“You’re facing against teams and you know where they are in the world, you know where we are in the world,” a devastated Harte said.
“We know what sacrifices we’ve put in place. We don’t make any excuses in the differences between funding and backing and blah blah. Right now, it’s just the 60 minutes on that hockey pitch and we came up short.”
When the dust settles and the disappointment lifts, Ireland’s hockey heroes will see the big picture and reflect on a job well done. After heartbreaking misses in qualification for Beijing 2008 and London 2012, just making it to Rio was their Mecca.
The first Irish hockey team to qualify for the Olympics since 1908, and the first Irish team of any stripe to make it since 1948.
“It’s been a dream,” Chris Cargo said.
It’s been what we’ve been working for, not just for a year or two years, but for a lifetime. It’s just really sad that it’s come to an end right now.
Once qualification was secured, expectations shifted. This was not a group of players who would be happy to just make up the numbers.
Ten of the 12 teams at the Olympics are professional outfits; Ireland and hosts Brazil are the exception. John Jermyn, the country’s all-time leading goalscorer, is a solicitor; Paul Gleghorne, an accountant.
The list goes on.
But to meet those raised expectations, to give themselves every chance of getting out of a stacked group and into the knockout stages, would cost money.
Government funding for their high-peformance unit was bumped up by €100,000 to €530,000 but it wasn’t nearly enough to put them on a level footing. They launched a crowdfunding drive, ‘Obsessed’, to try to raise an additional €225,000 to meet the shortfall.
Despite generosity, they got nowhere near that mark. Public donations of more than €50,000 were followed by €50,000 from the Olympic Council of Ireland.
Every little helped but as a model for a team determined to compete with the world’s best, it is far from sustainable.
Tackling the funding problem will be essential to make sure that this Olympic adventure, and any uptick in participation rates, aren’t squandered. Otherwise, despite the best of intentions, they’re just running to stand still.
“If we can get into the room and re-write the structures for team sport with government, it would be amazing,” coach Craig Fulton said.
“We’d like to plan the next four years and how we can go about that because there’s something here. There’s definitely something here. If we haven’t inspired another group of hockey players back home then, I don’t know what will.
We hope that we can put structures in place where we can bring in the younger age groups, get them into a decent coaching and S&C programme that’s sustainable, but also keep this group.
“We’ve only probably two or three guys over 30 and I think they have nine over 30 in that Argentinian team. That’s another almost two cycles; one, definitely.
“If we can get this structure in place and have some sort of partnership in place to keep them playing two, two-and-a-half years out from an Olympics, it could go a long way towards using this experience from this one into the next one.”
For Cargo, the aim now is simple.
“It has been a great experience and I hope it has really shown everyone back home that there’s a team in Ireland that everyone should be proud of, and in a sport that can come back to the Olympics time and time again. That is our goal.
This is not a once-off. This is not a fluke. This is what we want to do every time.
The hope is that this Olympic adventure will position them more in the mainstream and give them an extra bargaining chip when the time comes to talk turkey.
Beyond that, the legacy of this particular group of players will hopefully inspire the next David Harte, the next Chris Cargo.
“We’re not quite as popular as the O’Donovan brothers,” Cargo smiled. “I think if we had a few more Cork boys giving interviews, it might help.
“We want people to look at hockey now and think ‘If I want to go the Olympics some day, I can play hockey. I’m going to play it in my local club, my local school.’ We want young kids coming up and pushing us really hard, pushing us out of the team.
We’ve got world-class players. I think people have got to realise that. I think we’ve got to realise that in ourselves.
“We’ve got guys who play across professional leagues abroad and dominate them. They don’t just go to make up the numbers. There’s kids at home who can go abroad and do the same, and we also want to make the Irish league even better and better.
“Hopefully this has brought us a little bit more mainstream, a little bit more aware of funding bodies. I really hope this isn’t a once-off and that they believe in us as much as we believe in ourselves.”
To Fulton, who still has two years left on his contract, the final word on this chapter.
“Every journey comes to an end. As long as you look back, and I know that we’ve given everything we could and just came up short on the night, there’s a good education out there.
“There’s life lessons in that that you can’t teach people. They have to go through them and this was a good place to do it.”
