The particular challenge of GB water polo is to build on the massive opportunity of a home Olympics. There is bound to be a significant increase in interest in our sport, challenging the structure and people involved in British water polo.
1. Would you introduce yourself to our readers?
I˙m Tim Kendall and I˙m assistant coach to the Great Britain Men˙s water polo team. Our head coach is Cristian Iordache, from Romania, and currently working with us as a consultant coach, Zoltan Kasas, a five-time Olympian (including three as a assistant coach to the Gold medalling Hungarians).
Our selection was recently announced (see http://www.teamgb.com/news/water-polo-athletes-added-team-gb-london-2012). Obviously we are in the midst of incredibly exciting Olympic preparation (see http://www.waterpoloplanet.com/HTML_Trevor_pages/tf49_Interview_Tim_Kendall_Great_Britain.html), so will keep my answers as brief as possible. I would very much like to contribute in the future, when I˙ll have more of substance to say.
My own background is in British water polo, at all levels and in many places in the UK, though mostly in London. While I˙ll be making way for Zoltan on the bench during the Olympics themselves, I˙m lucky enough to be involved in the preparations, and hopefully in the legacy. I˙m heading water polo˙s involvement in Team GB˙s Ambition Programme, focused on those athletes and coaches with the ambition to compete at the Rio 2016 Olympic Summer Games (see http://www.teamgb.com/news/olympic-ambition-programme-athletes-coaches-announced).
2. In my blog i talk about the italian waterpolo issues. What do you think about these articles and the solution suggested?
It is so important that you are raising these matters, relevant to all of us involved in our great sport. One thing that really encouraged me recently was the obvious interest of the general public in the Olympic test event. I could see people who had never seen the sport before were gripped by its power, speed and strength: no particular extra presentation was involved, simply the excellent theatrical setting and lighting of the water polo arena. As a comparison rugby is well established sport here and attendances at Premier rugby union matches in England continue to rise. I˙m sure the majority of those people have no particular grasp of the rules to understand many refereeing decisions, but that doesn˙t seem to stop the game˙s growth as a spectacle (incidentally I˙m not sure actual participation is growing, given increased awareness of the injury risks of that sport).
3. What are the GB waterpolo issues? Are they the same? Do you want to introduce more questions?
The particular challenge of GB water polo is to build on the massive opportunity of a home Olympics. There is bound to be a significant increase in interest in our sport, challenging the structure and people involved in British water polo. Performance-wise, we have a low performance base from which to build, not having been a leading country in water polo since the 1920s. There are something like 12-15000 water polo players in the UK, in relatively small clubs that involve wonderfully enthusiastic people, but struggle for funding and facilities. One of the main questions for British water polo is how to fund and build larger clubs. There are not financial advantages in sponsoring sports clubs in the UK: so they have to stand on their own commercially simply through membership subscriptions. At our recent national conference, a report by a task force to look into the future of water polo was published. Several interesting recommendations were made, including the creation of several sustainable Performance clubs. We will see if they are adopted. I˙d like to report back in more detail on this in the future. It is interesting to see enterprises like El Cuervo˙s that make use of social media and present an up-to-date image to our sport: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68-9SEwbSSA&feature=plcp We were also recently trained at the Montpellier club, whose recent growth and success has been build around their use of a website: http://www.montpellierwaterpolo.com/
4. What do you think about the Giannouris and Tim Hartog interviews?
From these interviews, it is evident that that the main challenges are in common, whatever the current status in our respective countries. We all need to attract a TV audience, but in the UK, we particularly need to prove we are internationally competitive and to remain so.
5. What are in your opinion the actions to fix the international waterpolo issues?
It˙s been fantastic over the past couple of years working with Cristian, Zoltan (as well as the excellent English Institute of Sport S&C and Lifestyle coaches, and physio), and especially with our improving and committed players, but I˙m not sure I quite have the experience yet to 'fix' the issues you mention. What I would say is that players and coaches should never doubt that they are involved in a sport that is not just fantastic to play, but pretty good to watch as well, if well presented and filmed. To promote the sport, its practitioners, both players and coaches, need to demonstrate modern Olympian values, such as sportsmanship, decency, openness to the media and enjoying taking part. Team GB˙s values are performance, responsibility, unity, pride and respect: all contributing to an overall performance objective. The Ambition Programme I mentioned gives me the opportunity to learn from other sports, and there are many in the UK thriving from a performance perspective. For example, it is interesting how funding for gymnastics clubs is helped by commercial gyms. Considering at other sports also helps me appreciate the strengths of our own sport. Finally I would like to take this opportunity to say that the athletes from our squad who were not selected for the Olympics deserve a huge amount of credit for their efforts and resilience, and for pushing those selected to their limits: Ben Alcorn, Craig Hammond, Dan Laxton, Mike Bourne, Richard Lawlor and Will Middleton. I hope and think they will continue to contribute in the future with their talent and application.
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