2009-10 Annual Report - Australian Water Polo Inc

Attendees at the national conference in Sydney in May,
2010.
• Coaching the goalkeeper; outside shooter
• Culture, tradition and system of water polo in
Hungary
• Technical analysis of the Hungarian shooting
action
• Refereeing game advantage
• Video performance analysis in water polo
• New FINA rule interpretations
• Coach and referee accreditation/new resources
All delegates were invited to attend the men’s national
training camp to watch, observe and interact with NTC
coaches and appointed referees.
Acknowledgements
In closing, I would like to thank the following people
for their support throughout the year — Chris Harrison,
Peter Hobday, John Whitehouse and Hobart office staff,
Michael Westdorp for his help with the conference and
finally, thank you to all of our conference presenters for
their time and enthusiasm during the conference.
Scott Schweickle
National Development Manager
➤ National Media Report
The past year was unusual in a media sense as it
was the post-Beijing Olympic Games year.
It was unusual on two fronts. The first was the fact that
it was a non-Olympic year after the euphoria of a bronze
medal and the second was that our national teams were
rebuilding and failed to produce substantive results.
As senior teams build to the 2012 Olympic Games,
results will start coming but as was shown in Rome at
the FINA World Championships in July, 2009, our teams
were not at the same high standard of some other
nations. Retirements and team adjustments after Beijing
meant biting the bullet and not producing high results
that normally keep the media happy.
However, we did keep the media informed of our
many happenings, sending out in excess of 200 media
releases and maintaining a high-quality website, which
was constantly updated.
Web Site
The hit rate on the web site is starting to mount as
more and more people become aware of its excellent
news and information capabilities. The quietest month
was September with just over two million hits while May
was one of four months with more than three million hits,
reaching 3.84 million. During the National Water Polo
League season there were 12.4 million hits. May proved
to be the busiest month of the year with 83,609 visitors to
the site. Plans are in process to revitalise the site.
The hardest thing about a site such as ours is that
there is a voracious appetite for information. Time zones
make it hard to keep up for some people with the site
having to be refreshed when information comes to
hand. Therefore, there are constant calls for when the
information is to be posted. With international tours, there
is a huge demand on the time of managers, who have to
tend to a team and then try to get internet connections
to write and post stories on matches. This, then, has to
be processed at this end and posted. This is done as
swiftly as possibly but teams do miss days and it is hard
to source information by other means. Texting is starting
to prove popular.
The Meltwater News link at the bottom of the home
page provides information gleaned from newspapers
around the world. Small newspapers cover much of their
stories online while bigger newspapers only place up
major stories. Thus, as a smaller sport, we miss coverage
in this area. However, we must note that many stories
that do appear in newspapers are not placed online and
miss this vital link. We update this feature almost daily
with stories we think you want to read.
Newspapers
This is the arena we most want to convert. Sporadically,
the main metropolitan newspapers cover various stories
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