Original Personal Aims :
Number ONE - to answer the many questions that players had asked over the seasons, especially those who moved to other divisions! For example:
Where do the opposition play?
What coloured socks do they wear?
What is a Newsletter? How do I get one?
Who is in charge?
Who should I call?
What do I do with these score cards? etc.

 ALSO - playing with so many new people every year, I know how frustrated players get when trying to obtain information or trying to find someone to confirm the third hand information they have. Many captains and team organisers down my end are fairly new to the game and haven't had the experience to know where to go for information and they needed as much help and as little administrative hassle as possible.  

 AND - after seeing the volume of awards that the LMHA Mixed Section made every year, I was reminded that considering the size of the LMHA, there was very little (if any) publicity in the press, or on the radio. There was therefore very little school, or general public awareness that we existed, except in a few isolated instances. Wasn't it time we shared our pride and our considerable successes and blew our own trumpet?

 With the changed emphasis in sports education and by our no longer playing on school or public pitches, we have also become less visible to youngsters over recent years and we surely, more than ever, need to do something to redress the balance.

 Just after laying the site frame work, it was evident that there was also a need to provide a simple site for a much wider anticipated audience than just Association members and officers, as was originally perceived. There were the public and potential players and parents to consider.

 So with continued site growth, the LMHA was approached to obtain formal approval for the site and to test the committee and members need for it. People outside the area, new players coming into the area and young members with access to the web were certainly grateful for the mixed hockey information provided, but the site continued to grow with people's participation, despite receiving no official recognition or reply.

By this time, the original site aims had expanded to be:

To provide up to date information about the LMHA, its rules, officers, clubs etc.
To provide fixtures, results and a statistics information on all LMHA competitions and activities
To promote mixed hockey
To promote the sponsors of the LMHA and the web-site
To minimize the number of "clicks" needed to access the required information
To set up and maintain LINKS to hockey related Web Sites and to our own club's sites
To set up pages for clubs by using their information, so that all clubs are linked directly or indirectly by links from the site
To provide Chat Room facilities, if required by members (provided and discarded 2000)
To provide a News service
To enable browsers to see copies of the current and previous issues of the Newsletter
To provide facilities for browsers to make constructive comments, providing feedback on site quality and content
Also in future, when required; to provide media contact information, shopping facilities & school contact information.

 In 2001, when the LRHA was formed and the old Mens, Womens & Mixed Hockey Associations were amalgamated, the old LMHA site was changed to match the new "sectional" organisation and to give a much fuller picture of county hockey life from school to retirement. The web-site also grew in size due in part to the active participation and contributions of the English Hockey Development Officer, formally Cath Arter.

 By January 2006, the site had grown large, cumbersome to manage and a little fragmented, perhaps too closely following the sectional set up of the association. Player's contribution to the site had also stopped, more clubs had started their own web-sites and perhaps the novelty of web-sites was waning, so the first major re-structuring under the LRHA banner took place to:

 a) reflect the new contributions to it,   

 b) to move more completely to a fully "integrated" site

 c) to houseclean (locate and clear out all the old dead files)

 d) to greatly reduce the size and complexity of the site to make it easier/quicker to manage

 e) to make it even quicker for people to view the web-site with a 56Kb modem

 f) to remove my email address from the pages to reduce unwanted mail.

 Even after all this time, I don't think that the main site aims have changed, except in the name change from LMHA to LRHA.  

 Whether these objectives have been met for you I don't know, but if they have NOT been met, or the site falls short of your expectations, DO something about it and give me some feedback.
 

Thanks,

Last updated Feb 2013