England Hockey has defended its decision to use an “independently conducted stress testing” company chaired by the national governing body’s own chair in a bid to iron out the continued problems with its Game Management System (GMS), The Hockey Paper can disclose.
For a second season running, the GMS, which originally launched in August 2021, has caused a myriad of problems for the sport, with many lambasting the system which is hopefully set to change the sport in terms of ease, data and statistics.
But clubs have been unable to register players on the GMS this season and the system derided as “shambolic” in many quarters, adding extra strain on the thousands of club volunteers across England.
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One aspect EH had failed to take into account, the information in GMS is only as good as the inputter. EH cannot guarantee the information is correct, so they cannot guarantee the information within GMS.
The only benefit i can see from GMS is the league tables are now often updated & correct on Saturday evenings. I’m not sure the extra finance & A LOT of extra work by club volunteers each week justifies the benefits. Why oh why use WTU website?
Nice to see the words “GMS” and “swift” used together in the same sentence.
And if (when?) stress testing shows GMS to carry on failing at critical moments on a Friday or Saturday evenings, what then? Does EH soldier on with patches and platforms, or ditch WTU, and beg Fixtures Live, and/or Tex Systems for a reboot: “you’re right, we’re not sensible, can we come back?”
Back in February, one problem with GMS got this response from gms.support: “But the clubs voted for this”. Yes, maybe this re-governance of areas and leagues, with regulations consistent across England. But no, not this monstrous bureaucracy.
Why use WTU? Because it was just about adequate for umpire appointments. But loading the whole of hockey onto its creaking platform… maybe not.
They are clearly happy to send grass root clubs into ‘administration’!
If the EH Chair was involved in approving the GMS fiasco, why on earth is he also being paid to fix it?