Tuesday 16 December 2008

Quick hit: SPARC's funding cuts for women's sport

SPARC has arranged its funding allocations for our various sports, and have decided to give no funding to the Black Sticks (women's hockey), the Tall Ferns (women's basketball) and badminton. In contrast, men's hockey and men's basketball both receive healthy increases in funding.
But that did little to impress New Zealand Hockey chief executive Ramesh Patel, who labelled Sparc's decision "lop-sided"...

"Our take is the women's team is still on the world stage, they are ranked 11, which is disappointing, but they are still there. To be told they are getting no funding is hard to understand."

Though cuts were expected for the Black Sticks after their poor showing in Beijing, their complete scratching has left Patel dumbstruck.

While men's hockey would have $140,000 of service credits for the Academy of Sport next year, Patel wondered what the 25 women players were supposed to do.

I should also note that women's football has had a significant funding boost. Maybe the women's hockey player should change codes?

Thanks to reader Azlemed who sent this article to me via Facebook.

7 comments:

Azlemed said...

I saw the article and wasnt very impressed... esp seeing it was mainly womens teams affected. glad you could use it for a blog... D

DPF:TLDR said...

Perhaps this is an appropriate point to ask whether the state should be funding sports teams at all.

Anonymous said...

Hugh: maybe if they funded more sports teams they wouldn't have to fund so many hospitals.

Anonymous said...

Or maybe they'd have to fund more, since sports injuries put immense pressure on our emergency services.

DPF:TLDR said...

Kakariki, that implies government funding for health is motivated primarily by what is needed to provide a decent outcome. That's not the case.

Anonymous said...

Yes, because no good ever came out of people playing sport, and being active, or anything.

DPF:TLDR said...

Anon, of all the hobbies people indulge in, organised team sports are the only one that the state supports so lavishly. Are you saying that in your opinion it produces a level of 'good' quantifiably better than, say, embroidery?

As for being active, that's a total strawman. But judging by the way most people react to a national sport's team playing a major match, this funding is encouraging 11-20 people to be 'active' and hundreds of thousands of others to plant themselves in front of the idiot box.