BBF Confident of Alternate Government Funding Source - Hoopsfix.com

BBF Confident of Alternate Government Funding Source

The British Basketball Federation (BBF) are “confident” of securing funding from an alternate government source following the UK Sport announcement last week.

UK Sport denied British Basketball’s Tokyo 2020 funding cycle bid, but interim CEO Lisa Wainwright has said the BBF have sourced other public funding potentially in excess of seven figures, adding she couldn’t reveal where from but that they are confident of coming to terms of an agreement in the coming months.

“We knew all along we weren’t going to get funding,” she said. “We’re not going to medal, we can’t change the (UK Sport) policy. So what we’ve done instead is work with a different agency to get funding and confident that will happen.”

Meanwhile, three new interim roles through until March 2017 have been filled within the BBF, with the hiring of Martin Lindsey as the Business Director, Rohan West as Performance and Commercial Director and Ian Poynton (who starts in January) for Communications, Marketing and Funding Manager. These come off the back of securing £98,000 in governance funding from Sport England.

A temporary office has been secured at SportPark Loughborough University for the interim staff, to save on costs travelling to the BBF’s main office at UEL SportsDock in East London.

Eyebrows will be raised with the news all three are former colleagues of Wainwright at Volleyball England but she insists it was a fair recruitment process, with a selection panel that included her, Sport England and an HR consultancy.

“I would understand for some people this may not look good, but if you want to talk to people who applied for the job and were interviewed, we conducted an open and transparent process with independent HR support and the approval of Sport England who were involved throughout.

“There were 18 people who applied for the Manager role and 13 for the Director role. I was delighted with the number of applicants for the short term roles. On the day, Ian Poynton was the best candidate for the Communications, Marketing and Funding role – as a basketball nut – he plays for Nottingham Hoods and having just raised £3million in awards at Volleyball England – he was a stand out candidate. Not to mention his previous role at Sport England in the grants team. Rohan West was appointed as Performance and Commercial Director having experience from a host of sports and previously working for 7 years at TicketMaster.”

Rohan West in particular seems to have a disjointed role; Performance and Commercial are not known to go hand in hand, but Wainwright says the two responsibilities are possible due to a time-splitting of the roles. The Performance side consists of submitting a plan to Sport England – who have said to The Telegraph they will support basketball to create a plan for talent-development – and is in process, and then the commercial side will come into force in January, working with FIBA to quickly identify assets and review the assembled strategy that is currently being drawn up with the help of an ex-Commercial Director of FIBA working pro bono.

BBF has not announced the new positions, Wainwright says, due to a lack of resource. There is currently no one in a PR and communications role, with Chris Egerton – who held the position over the summer – filling in voluntarily where possible.

It puts the BBF full time staff members at 6 (when Ian starts in January) – with Lisa and her three new staff joining programme managers Beverley Kettlety and Diana-Mae Wilson.

On the GB Senior Men’s side, as they look to Eurobasket 2017, Wainwright confirmed Joe Prunty will return as Head Coach for the tournament but after that, question marks remain with the new FIBA qualification window falling mid-season – when Prunty has NBA commitments.

“Eurobasket will be Joe,” she said. “He’s committed to it and as a company we would see that as a continuation of contract.

“The likelihood of him continuing after that is for him to decide but I think in terms of his other commitments he would need to make some decisions on that.”

Logistics of how everything is going to work with all home nation junior teams being represented as GB next summer are starting to unfold, but the exact plans still largely rely on securing funding. The BBF will be relying on Basketball England to deliver the Junior National Team camps on their behalf.

“Without funding there’s not a lot you can do. Until we get funding in we can’t deliver, unless we put more pressure on volunteers that are already stretched.

“…The fundamental thing is do we have the funding to operate U16, 18 England and GB camps? The programmes have been submitted together (for funding) and Vladan is aware of that. The intention will be that we will ask Basketball England to deliver both the 16 and 18s GB programmes because there will be continuity of staffing with that.

“In relation to that, the most critical thing is the coaching staff. We had yesterday (Thursday) gone through a process of appointing – yet to be announced – GB 16s and 18s men and women’s coaches through nominations from the home countries and that will be announced as soon as the board ratify.

“I know there are camps over the Christmas break so what’s important is those coaches know that they are going to be either English and British coaches or English, Scottish coaches as the case may be.

“What’s going to happen throughout the year, is that we’ve agreed in terms of the basic camps that are required for England, and Scotland are aware of this, and then which elements of the camp will need to come together for the British element and that’s what we’ve put the package together for the government to fund.”

The BBF acknowledge they have missed their initial timeline of having the executable strategy in place for their Vision & Strategy document by the end of this year. Basketball England’s Basketball Development Model (BDM), and included expert working groups, confusingly, are a separate entity that are not currently part of the wider BBF strategy.

“There has been no executive team in place to drive anything forward,” Wainwright said.

“That work will start in the New Year. What has happened in the background, is the group of CEOs, Gavin (Williams – Basketball Wales), Kevin (Pringle – Basketball Scotland), Stewart (Kellett – Basketball England) and myself are meeting on a monthly basis and we’ve also agreed to coordinate a coordinating group that manages each of those areas (identified in the strategy document) and they can start to form the groups going forward in the New Year.

“But without any staff it’s been impossible from a timeline to move that forward from a quality perspective, so that’s the next piece of work.

“In terms of the BDM model, I haven’t got all the detail of it, but I would see that sitting in the talent development pathway piece of that work.”

Wainwright added she expects the working groups to be formed and have detailed measures in place by the end of their interim roles in March.

And despite British Basketball’s chequered history, and the growing criticism from players involved with the programme, Wainwright has emphasised the desire for people to look to the future instead of focusing on the past.

“I can’t speak for what was before me, I wasn’t here,” she concluded.

“But all I can say is the sport and all the individuals involved in it need to reset the dial. (London) 2012 has gone, that culture has gone. There’s nobody on the board that I’m aware that was part of it before and I wasn’t part of it so I can’t say whether it was good or bad or indifferent. All I can say is, we have a new model and we’ve been very clear within that model of how we want to operate, in terms of that we believe, trust and share and collaborate, that’s what we want to do.

“In terms of the players, you know what, if players want to play and are respectful of GB and want to wear the shirt, that’s their choice, some will some won’t. I’m not convinced I can change that, but all I can do is say that the board is absolutely committed to doing the best they can for this sport, as are other staff in terms of generating enough income to ensure the squads can participate in the competitions that they need to participate.

“I’d hope that they’d want to play for Great Britain, but I can’t change the history of what they might have come through, and again I think it’s really important to reset, to stop talking about the history because it won’t help anybody.

“We have to talk about the future and if that’s one thing I can bring to this is, we tend to spend 98% of our time talking about the history, we need to spend 98% of our time talking about the future and that will be quite a big mindset for the sport to take on.”

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