Hockey: Last chance to stick it

Nick Haig and the Black Sticks are playing India in a series, building up to the Oceania Cup. Photo / Photosport

In a fortnight, at 4pm in Mt Taranaki's shadow, the New Zealand men's hockey team look set to decide their Olympic fate.

With a world ranking of seventh, they are expected to make the final of the Oceania Cup against either Australia, Samoa or Fiji.

They must win that match in Stratford to qualify for the Rio Games. If not, they face temporary sporting oblivion. A loss of personnel, many of whom balance jobs with international careers, would seem inevitable.

"This is the most important game for our sport in a number of years," Hockey New Zealand high performance director Terry Evans says.

"Our athletes train full-time while incorporating work and family life, which places tough demands on them. Around 10 million people play hockey and our teams are ranked fourth [women] and seventh [men].

"We effectively do that on a shoe-string, smell-of-an-oily-rag [budget]."

Hockey NZ received funding of $750,000 for the men's team and $1.3 million for the women's team in this year's High Performance Sport New Zealand budget.

The women, who have qualified for the Olympics, are guaranteed another $1.3 million next year. There are no such promises for a men's side who last missed the Games in 2000.

The women are on discretionary performance enhancement grants but need to get a top-three finish in December's World League 4 to guarantee that funding in 2016. The men are already out of contention.

This raises the question: Do these teams face imminent failure?

Semi-professional teams rarely win Olympic medals; that's certainly the case in hockey.

In fact, no amateur New Zealand team of more than two people has won an Olympic medal since 1988. The only recipients have been equestrian teams (1992, 1996, 2012) and team pursuit cyclists (2008, 2012).

According to Evans, around 70,000 people play hockey in New Zealand. Add initiatives like Hawke's Bay's festival of hockey in April, when seven international teams competed against New Zealand's women, and it suggests winning an Olympic medal might be too simplistic a criterion to judge whether a sport deserves taxpayer funding.

Those visiting teams invested thousands of dollars in the local economy. Conversely, the sport earns export dollars when New Zealanders are regularly invited to compete in overseas leagues.

"We need to find a mechanism by which our athletes can commit," Evans says. "In the current environment that's difficult, because we're working to make the whole operation sustainable.

HPSNZ chief executive Alex Baumann acknowledges the desire to support hockey as a key part of New Zealand's sporting fabric, but says sports still need to meet agreed standards.

"Team sports can impact a broad range of people and therefore be important for the country, but we can't shy away from actual performance. We understand team sports cost more and our hockey teams probably receive less investment relative to some of the stronger countries.

"However, as our system has evolved, the bar has been raised. We would love to invest more but this is the reality."

There is a convoluted Olympics escape route for the men's Black Sticks should they lose the Oceania Cup. If South Africa win the Africa Cup - they have won the last six - to secure the last Games continental spot in Johannesburg on the same day, their Olympic Committee are considering not sending them because they might not be competitive enough.

New Zealand would get a Rio reprieve via their world ranking.

The men's next match is today against India in Christchurch when they will look to level the series. The visitors lead 2-1.