Grant Treeby/Hockey Australia
doesn’t get any better for the fans than hearing directly from the stars of the sports world. International hockey players have
started piling onto Twitter too, in the process making themselves accessible to the global community in a way that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago. Someone with a bit more experience than others in this area is Hockeyroo Kate Hollywood (@ katehollywood10). The 23-year-old star has been a regular in the side since making her debut in 2005, but it is her eagerness to interact with the fans that makes her a popular social media contact (1870 followers on Twitter). Kate seems to understand social
media’s potential and how to use it, which make her very popular online. She told PUSH: “I wanted to share what we do on tour and in training, and just give people a bit of an insight into what we do.” And her enthusiasm for Tweeting about her everyday life – which would be a dream for many – is there on the web for all to see. It is very clear that the likes of Kate
and another Twitter-fiend England’s Darren Cheesman have embraced social media for what they are – a global conversation. Both recognise that they can make a difference through Twitter, as Kate puts it: “I’ve always been interactive with the fans… I wanted to be able to talk to anyone. When I was a kid, I always wanted to talk to the ones I admired and looked up to.” This global conversation is not
when it All goes peAr shAped
RYAN BABEL: The Liverpool striker’s Twitter comments and a link to a mocked-up picture of referee Howard Webb in a Manchester United shirt cost him £10,000 and a warning from the FA. Babel posted the link and commented “And they call him one of the best referees. That’s a joke,” after an FA Cup tie in which Liverpool skipper Stephen Gerrard was sent off and the game’s only goal came from a Manchester United penalty. Babel admitted a charge of improper conduct, and had already removed the Tweet and apologised (via Twitter) but that didn’t stop him being fined something less than two- days’ salary.
without pitfalls. There have been cases of sports stars releasing information before it becomes ‘official’ and cases of social networks being more efficient at getting information to players than the official channels. And then there are those long-regretted heat-of-the- moment comments that get can get flashed around the world in the blink of an eyelid. Everyone makes mistakes, and
it’s now very easy for anyone to post something that will be seen by hundreds, sometimes millions, of people. It’s equally easy to blow these comments out of proportion, but blaming these sportspeople would only drive them away. Kate says she wants people to realise that she’s a normal person by using these social media outlets. One day, either she or someone else from the international hockey circuit will probably vent something they shouldn’t. We can only hope that when it happens that they are not so frightened by the backlash that they abandon these sites and deprive us of some real insight. And it’s not just individuals who are flocking to social media sites. England Hockey uses Twitter and Facebook to, as Lawrence West one of the national body’s PR team puts it, “add
Pictures: Top, Hockeyroo Kate Hollywood in action and, above and right, examples of the pictures she is posting via Twitter – above with Aussie rules star Harry O’Brien (@harry_o) and right with teammate Emily Hurtz
social media to their existing stable of marketing communications tools”. And to talk to “anyone from your average hockey player anywhere in the country to journalists and other stakeholders.” This is an opportunity which England
Hockey has rightly jumped on. Certainly, there’s a potential to bring new people to the sport by publicising it through the most popular communication tools of the moment. However, as any good businessman will tell you, keeping existing customers is just as important
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