Gareth Grundie has been appointed the new head coach of the Irish senior women’s hockey team, the 46-year-old Belfast native the permanent successor to Sean Dancer who stepped down from the role last March. Facundo Quiroga had been in charge on an interim basis since then, but Grundie’s extensive experience working in the women’s game, at club and international level, has secured him the position.
The bulk of the current senior squad will be no strangers to Grundie after his time as assistant to Dancer and his predecessor Graham Shaw, working with both coaches when Ireland won silver at the 2018 World Cup and qualified for their first Olympic Games, in Tokyo in 2021. He also coached Irish teams at underage level.
Before then, Grundie enjoyed no little success with Ards, where he was at the helm for over a decade, winning indoor and outdoor titles with the women’s team before leaving in 2018 to focus on his international work.
He took over as Ireland’s interim coach when Shaw set sail for New Zealand in 2019, but he left the Irish set-up in 2022 to take over as head coach of the Czech Republic’s women’s team. During his time in charge, he led them to a silver medal in division two of the European Championships and to bronze at the Indoor World Cup, lifting them to second in the world indoor rankings.
He is just the second Irish coach, after Shaw, to take charge of the women’s national team in 26 years, Riet Kuper (the Netherlands), Gene Muller (South Africa), Darren Smith (New Zealand) and Dancer (Australia) filling the role during that time. And he is the first Ulster man appointed to the job since Terry Gregg, who stepped down in 1998.
Grundie has a busy 2025 ahead of him, starting with the FIH Nations Cup in Chile in February where Ireland will attempt to qualify for the Pro League. They came close last June, but lost to Spain in the final. And come August there’s the European Championships in Mönchengladbach where Ireland have been drawn in a pool with the Netherlands, the reigning Olympic, world and European champions, Germany, ranked fourth in the world, and France.
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