Belfast’s Gareth Grundie has been confirmed as the new head coach of the Ireland women’s hockey team, taking over from Sean Dancer.
The 46-year-old, who formerly led Ireland to the 2020 Tokyo Olympics while interim head coach, will now take on the role on a permanent basis from the start of November.
Grundie leaves his role as head coach of the Czech women’s hockey team to return to his native side ahead of a busy 2025 that includes the FIH Nations Cup and EuroHockey Championships.
The Co Antrim man has always been heavily involved with Hockey Ireland, being part of their Junior Age Group programme during his early days as a coach and working with a significant number of the squad that won an historic silver medal at the 2018 World Cup.
He would take over from Graham Shaw on an interim basis in 2019, leading the team to qualifying for the Olympics for the first time in its history, before Dancer took over permanently later that year.
A left-field switch to the Czech Republic led to success for Grundie, however, his work with the women’s team yielding silver at last year’s European Championships II and a bronze at the Indoor World Cup in South Africa.
Now he aims to bring that success to Ireland, where his first challenge will be February’s Nations Cup in Chile, followed by a testing EuroHockey Championships group that contains the Netherlands and Germany.
He replaces Dancer, who stepped down in March after Ireland failed to qualify for this summer’s Olympics and left the nation ranked 12th in the world, and is the first Northern Irish coach of the women’s national team since Terry Gregg, who stepped down in 1998.