Daniel a Lofti reports on the mixed fortunes of UK handball: a rising tide of enthusiasm, with funding cut to a trickle.
Melanie Chown, who took over as Team GB’s women’s handball manager after London 2012, believes that handball is growing in popularity, especially in London: ‘The game is catching on hugely in schools post the Olympics, and the challenge is to build a strong pathway for the schools into clubs, and create genuine competition.’ Chown added that London teams have ‘dominated both the men’s and women’s national titles in the last 20 years.’ In other words, the future of the sport in Britain hangs on what happens here.
But Chown is putting a brave face on a difficult situation. Eight months after London 2012, UK athletes are already planning for Rio 2016. The Team GB success story in London last year has prompted funding body UK Sports to increase spending to £347m, an 11 per cent budget increase. But new funding is tightly focussed on medal-winning sports, and other sports which did not get such good results last summer are now less secure financially than they were before. Table tennis, basketball, indoor volleyball, wrestling and handball have all been left largely to their own devices. They face a struggle for survival.
Chown was devastated when she heard the news. ‘Whilst I understand the reasons behind the cut in funding, it was a bitter pill to swallow after all the hard work and amazing development,’ she said. ‘There has to be a different model applied to team sports. It takes time to build the base and heritage of a national team but team sports can be expensive for a single medal opportunity and that’s the problem.’
According to Chown, the English Handball Association (EHA) has been inundated with people asking how they can take up the sport. All over the country new clubs are starting up, and the EHA has been unable to keep pace with the demand for coaches, especially in schools. A grant of £1.2million from Sport England, designed to capitalise on interest generated by the Games, is something of a lifeline for the EHA. Chown sees this as seed money for further investment and future growth.
‘With the funding from Sport England, the key is to develop a stronger, more professional league set-up from the best to beginners, then get a school structure right across the South and especially in London, which can then feed into strong clubs across London. We need more investment in full size sports halls so that clubs can have home games at home, to generate local interest and create a community club, rather than now, where most games have to be played in East London as that is where the full size courts are.’
British handball teams had never before competed in the Olympics, and unfortunately both the men’s and women’s teams lost all their matches at London 2012. But this did not stop the public falling in love with the sport, Chown insists: ‘Once seen, I knew everyone would fall in love with it and want to play it. Of course it would have been amazing to win a game but that was always a tall order. The public were surprised by the intensity, speed and physicality of the sport. Entertainment levels with a goal nearly every minute were fantastic for the spectator.’
But she went on to warn that dearth of funding could be a real dampener: ‘For the senior GB teams it is very hard right now. Without funding it will be very difficult to maintain the momentum. Self-funding is a short term fix only.’