Day 5 - Thursday, 5th August

Americas Day

The day began with a celebration of the Americas. Instead of “Americas Day” it was really “Morgan’s Day!” as she is the sole representative of this continent. Morgan, helped by Tina, showed a slide show with facts and highlights from the different countries. The groups had a small quiz to do identifying countries on the map and answering a few general knowledge questions.

After this we went straight into the first workshop, Event Management, presented by Tina. We decided that organising an event is not easy to do. There are four phases that we have to consider. These are: Pre-Event, Planning, Delivery and Post-Event.
The Pre-Event phase is mainly about generating ideas before the event. This may include deciding whether or not to have an events committee, what the concept or theme of the event should be and the budget for the event.

In the Planning phase, it’s mainly about organising details of an event. A realistic time plan is very important as it ensures that you are on schedule and keeps the plan on track. Tina also mentioned that dividing into workgroups in order to run the event is usually easier, especially with so many different aspects to be considered. Some of these are: media, clean and waste, security and work force. Venue planning is also very important, deciding whether to use an existing or temporary pitches can cost or save money. We also worked in groups to try and organise an event.

In the delivery phase, the role of the event organising committee is to ensure the event goes well.
The Post-event stage consists of evaluation meetings and reviews of the overall event.
 

Just before lunch, we had a very informative workshop on Club Development from Ben Glencross. Hockey is a very new sport in Qatar and there is only one club with 5 coaches and 200 members. Hockey is not very well known so we need to find a way to spread awareness. The workshop gave us some great ideas to use in order to encourage people in our club to spread awareness and recruit more players. Within our working groups, we decided that the best way to increase in numbers would be by using volunteers, sponsors and setting up a management committee in order to increase the number of players, coaches and umpires. The workshop was extremely helpful and showed us how to take the next step in developing our clubs and Qatar hockey.

After lunch, we had a very interesting workshop on “Media” presented by Claudia Klatt. After a short introduction, we talked about media, past and present. Everybody learned a lot and many found out just how important media is in everything we do. When compared to other two workshops today, you can see that media is an influencing factor as often it gives the supporters the view of the management team and players opinions of the games.

After the short workshop, we headed to the Champions Trophy venue where we were taken on a guided tour behind the scenes. We saw many things including the changing rooms and the actual -Champions Trophy, which the winner will receive on Sunday. The tour showed how important it is to look after volunteers so that they are keen to volunteer again! After the tour we watched an exciting match between Spain and New Zealand ending in a 4-4 draw after Spain was awarded a penalty corner in the last minute which they scored from.

At the end of the match, the group headed to the media tent where we were shown around and allowed to sit in on the press conference. It was very interesting to learn that it is compulsory for both the Manager and Captain to attend the conference, if they are not present, they are fined. Two very good questions were asked by Rachel and Anna, on behalf of the group. Both Captains responded positively and gave expansive answers.

Hearing what the teams thought about their game was a great way to end a very interesting and informative day!