The Netball Show
S7 Ep68: Paul Dring (Part 01) (17th Sept 2024)
(upbeat music) - NetNet Cop here. I'm really proud to be an ambassador for Flyhawk, leading the way for Netball and Women's Sport. Flyhawk Design and Make Netball Dresses have Netball Kit, Netball Teamwork, and Netballs plus much, much more. Head to flyhawk.com now. - The Netball show with Flyhawk. Raising the bar for Netball and Women's Sports. - It's a Netball show with Flyhawk. Paul Dring is the England Netball Team Manager. Let's have a look at the role itself. I mean, obviously there for players on major tournaments, but do you look after room bookings, that kind of thing as well as part of the role? - Yeah, everything really, I suppose, in the background. Yeah, where do I start? It starts really with kind of, if you look at the year now, we're already looking ahead to next year in terms of what our international calendar looks like. So once we've got that in place, then I kind of go ahead and just make everything possible really, I suppose, in terms of just all of the flights, the hotels, the court bookings, all of that, for all of our camps and all of our tours. That's just a very small part though. I mean, that's a big part, but that's just one part, I suppose, of what you do as a job, but there's so many other parts to it as well. It starts off with, I suppose getting everything in place in terms of what we need, but just simply to be in the right place, to get ourselves over on tour. But then it's also creating the right environment. So we've kind of learned what works best for us as a group. So it isn't as simple as just booking a hotel and a netball court, it's trying to find the right hotel, the right area, the right kind of setup that'll work for us. You know, things like the World Cup, for example, we put Colorado work into that. We went to the hotel, I recced the hotel, we also went out there for the January Quad Series and we looked at what kind of work for us as options and found out that not just getting hotel rooms, but by getting most of the floor working with the hotel on that, that we could create our own little environment that spilled out onto the corridors and we could have posters up and we could kind of make it a home from home if you like. So things like that probably don't get seen, but they're quite important parts to our environments to getting the right sort of team room, the right breakout spaces, all of those kind of things that just make it a little bit more enjoyable when you're in the place for a long period of time. So I think, you know, that's one part, but then there's so many other bits, you know, I kind of deal with all the kit as well. So making sure that the players and staff have all the right kit. We do a lot with obviously getting all the players, the selection of players. I mean, although I don't get involved in the selection itself, but I do, once we do selection, it's kind of informing all the players and then getting everything in place in terms of, you know, letting everyone know everything they need to know for a tour. And then, yeah, just all the general stuff that you say around a tour, just supporting athletes and staff and in getting there, get packing all the right stuff, getting there and back and all the transport and all the other bits that go alongside the tour. I mean, it's a huge team effort though, really. There's so many other things that go into it like all the nutrition as well. So I also kind of think if you think about going on holiday, you probably just book a holiday where you book a flight and some accommodation and you kind of work it out as you go along. And that's maybe for a small group, whereas doing this for a team, you're booking your flights, your accommodation for 30 people probably, but then also not just that, but like literally everything that you're going to do for every hour of every day that you're away to the finest detail, you know, in terms of all the timings and making sure that you're at training on time but matches on time, dealing with all the traffic, all of the lunches and dinners and making sure that's catered for plastics, nutritionally, the right food, getting all your snacks and stuff in as well in between. So there's just, there's so many, so many little parts as well that needs to be done. It isn't just as simple as booking a holiday. It's a lot more complicated than that. - And two initial questions that come from that. Players and sharing rooms is up to the individual players themselves. - Yeah, we do, it's a bit of both really. So I normally work with the leadership group on that. So I would go to them and say, right, obviously, we know this is the group of players coming on tour. Can you recommend who state, who shares with who? And they'll come back with a list to me and for each place. If there's kind of the same people sharing all the time, I might challenge it and go back and sell coming next up a little bit. Yeah, it will kind of be a bit of a joint venture really between me and the leadership group just to get that right. 'Cause we want athletes to feel comfortable with the person they're sharing with. 'Cause obviously people have different sleeping patterns and different patterns and things. But it's also about trying to get the group integrated and not just being completely familiar with the same person all the time. You get to know people better if you're sharing a room with them, don't you? So we sort of, yeah, since it's a bit of a joint venture and the coaches have some input as well. - In Liverpool as well, we saw the diamonds get a bust to the arena that was yards away. I mean, what would be your thoughts on that? - It's a very personal preference really. I think we like to have control over what we're doing as much as we can. So I think where we can drive ourselves on tour and at home, we will do that because if you have a coach and you're obviously relying on a coach person being on time picking you up and dropping you off. And if you finish the session early, then you might need to leave early and the coach might not be ready. So where we can, we try and provide our own transport. So we normally have like mini vans where we can get like eight to 12 people in at a time. So we would do that. It isn't always practical with parking though. So there are other considerations. I would say where it's like things like the World Cup where they provide transport for all the teams and it runs quite smoothly. That's quite, it's quite nice for me for a change not having to worry about getting all the vans out. And it's one less stress, I suppose in some ways, but it does take away that element of control because if you do need to move things, the bus might not be available. Whereas if you've got your own transport, then you can kind of flex a lot easier. You know, you don't rely on bus timetables. So obviously a preference will always be as close as possible. And recently at Nations Cup, at Wembley, we could actually, we stayed in the Hilton across the road and you can literally walk across the road. So that was perfect for us. You know, the timing is wise, you don't have to worry about any traffic or any of that kind of stuff. So I'd say it's a personal preference, but also budgets will play a part. You know, to have a coach to drive you a five minute journey is quite expensive. So we would try and avoid that while we can, but obviously if it's provided, then that's one of the things that will go with the tournament, but yeah, there's a few things. Personal preference and budget, I suppose, would be the things I'd consider. - You graduated from the Union of Brighton in 1996 and you had a degree in sport science. So how many opportunities were there to work within high performance sport at that time? - First of all, you're giving away my age a little bit there. I was trying to kick a little bit. (laughing) Yeah, it's fine. Yeah, so as you've said, that was back in the days. So came out with a sport science degree in '96 and there was no lottery funding at that stage. So the kind of UK sport model and the Olympic models that you've got and the sporting infrastructure that's there now wasn't there. So the normal thing for most people who came out at the same time as me is they kind of either went into teaching or became a fitness instructor, which is kind of what I did for a few years in a gym. They just weren't the jobs in sport, you know? So I kind of had to wait my time for that to come up and kind of drifted away from sport really, as most people, kind of my era did, really. You know, if I look at the people I went to uni with, there's probably only one out of the class that I know who's actually working in sport now. The rest of all kind of got into other jobs for different careers because they just weren't those opportunities that there are now. - UCAS is still very important today, isn't it? So how did you enjoy your time there? - That was an interesting one. Well, it's down the road for me. So I live in Worcester and UCAS is down at is in Cheltenham. So it was just, again, it was, I'd come back from traveling actually and I needed a job and that was something that ticked the boxes and sort of fitted what I had at the time, which I'd done a lot of kind of project management and kind of communications management type stuff. So it was, it was job and communications actually. So definitely has helped me out going forward in terms of the job I do now, in terms of how you communicate with people. But it was good fun. Yeah, it got me used to being in an office environment, which is a million miles away from, I guess, the kind of world I'm in now, but it was a good job at the time, enjoyed it. - These aren't from your wiki page either. This is proper research. 2014 Paralympic podium road coach with the GB cycling team. It's not nipple, just yet, but tell me a little bit about what you did. - Yeah, and that was my big break, I guess, in sport. So because I hadn't, as we already alluded to, because I came out with sport science, going into working sport, I desperately wanted to work in sport. And in the background, I've always been a cyclist. That's kind of my sport, really. So I competed at quite a decent level, really, back in the late '90s, in particular. And still race now, it's one of those sports that you can kind of race in age groups. So I've always had a real love and passion for cycling and was always looking for opportunities. And one came up to work with Great Britain Para Cycling team as a coach, just because I kind of had quite a lot of good experience of racing and I've done a bit of coaching along the way. So kind of grabbed that with both hands that couldn't actually quite believe it when they often made the job. It was one of the most amazing days of my life, because I kind of knew that was gonna be the start of something quite special. And as much as I enjoyed my job at UCAS, I didn't really want to work in communications in an office. I wanted to work in sport. And that was a very special when I got off of that job. But yeah, it was incredible. I really enjoyed it. I went to work all over Europe, basically, traveling to races with the team and coaching. But I think one of the key things that we had, because we have this quite a small staffing team and a lower budget, is that I kind of did a lot of team management as well. So we didn't even have a team manager for like six months of the job. So I kind of took on a lot of organizing, not just coaching it, but organizing with the tours and trips away and getting a software across Europe and stuff in vans and whatever. So I kind of got you still a lot of logistics and management of groups of players, athletes at that stage. So yeah, it set me up quite nicely, really. Although I would say you could argue it's a million miles away from Netball. I think it was a really good grounding in terms of working with groups of athletes. But also having been a coach, I kind of came into Netball understanding it from a coaching perspective, which I think is really important because there were times when I was at cycling that we had a team manager come in and kind of try and almost run the show a little bit too much. And I kind of thought, I learned from that, that actually when you're a coach, you're going to be leading this. It isn't going to be led by the team manager. So I kind of knew the sound on us here. Yeah, and I think it was really important for me. So when I came into Netball, I kind of thought, right, I've got to, it isn't me as a team manager to lead this environment. It's to listen to what the coaches want and how they want to work, how they want this environment to be and to do what I can to support that as much as possible. So yeah, I think it was a really good, really good sort of stepping stone, if you like. - It sounds like Jessos on your kind of getting on the DM. So if they can just hold off a second. The 2016 and was your moved into England Netball? Did you know much about the sport of the time you're joining? - No, so I'm quite happy to admit that I knew nothing about Netball at all. I mean, my only experience at Netball in 2016 when I came into the roles was thinking back to school days and the girls playing Netball and the boys playing football. You know, that was all I, that was my only knowledge. I hadn't had any sort of grounding in Netball at all. Yeah, hadn't played it. I didn't know the rules. I'm quite happy to admit all this. It's all very true. And yeah, knew nothing. It was just completely new to me. Obviously did quite a bit of research before the interview and found out a little bit about the team. But yeah, I mean, I'm quite happy to, there were quite some, some quite funny stories. I mean, the first tour I actually did, I'll never forget this because I just seen names. I didn't know who the players were and I didn't know how big the players were. And I remember something up in front of everyone after lunch. I think it was on one day and I had to go and pick up Jiva from the airport. And I remember saying to everyone, right, I've got to go, I've got to go and pick up Geva from the airport and everybody just, absolutely just tore into me and started laughing. And I was like, what are you talking about? And they said it's Jiva. And that's the truth, I didn't know. And I've told Jiva this story myself. I mean, I didn't know that was how you pronounce the name. So I was, I was so, I knew so little about the sport. Netball welcomed me in with open arms, like from day one. I think it was, it was unusual, had some kind of comments to me. I remember one of one quite high profile coach actually saying to me, oh, you're the male team manager. And I found that quite, I took a bit of a step back. I was like, that's quite an interesting perspective. And it was, it was different. I was coming into a sport that I knew nothing about, but also I was, I didn't realize at the time I was coming in in quite a unique position in international netball. But I was welcomed in with open arms and I'll never forget that England netball itself, the staff, the players, everybody just seemed to welcome me on board from day one. Once you get into the environment and you become familiar with everyone and happy, then I like to think you create that nicer environment for other people to come into. So I think, yeah, I'm very proud of what we've created as an environment over the years. And I do think it's a welcoming, nurturing environment for people to come into. The netball show is now also available via Sky HD, Sky Q, and Sky Glass. So let's sport and we're on the podcast trail. (logo whooshing)
Paul Dring explains more about his role as the England Netball Team Manager (RPT)