The 2nd National Sport Forum – Dynamics Towards Success

Various aspects rotating around  local sports will be discussed during the second  National Sport Forum hosted by SportMalta on the 26th and the 27th of October, 2018 at The Palace Hotel, Sliema. This year’s theme will be “Dynamics towards success’.  Over 150 sport administrators registered for this year’s event.

The forum is a valuable platform for providing organisations with essential information, sharing ideas and discussing common issues. Different roles within sport will be discussed, namely the role of the coach, the role of the parent and the role of the media. In addition, it will also give information on various topics, primarily innovative ideas towards improvement, commercialisation of sport facilities, sport academies and dual career. During the Forum, parallel meetings amongst different stakeholders on future collaboration will be held.

The forum will be addressed by local and top foreign guest speakers who will surely give an added value to the discussion.

Top speaker for this year’s event will be John Steele, a prominent figure in professional sport development in the UK. Steele has a unique blend of experience in creating and leading high performing teams, developed as a professional sports coach and as Chief Executive in the private, public, and not for profit sectors. He served on the England Rugby Board during the successful World Cup campaign of 2003 and appointed as CEO of the Rugby Football Union. The winning of the bid for the London 2012 Olympics and Paralympics saw John take up post as CEO of UK Sport, the organisation tasked with delivering a world class high performance sport system and delivering medal success for Team GB. His tenure through the Beijing Games and lead into the London Games saw unprecedented results for Team GB.

Another  valuable speaker will be Sheela Quinn, Coaching Children Development Manager from Sport Ireland Coaching. Quinn has been leading the development of  the Sport Ireland Coaching Children and Physical Literacy programmes, since 2012.  She has been instrumental in a number of national, international and ICCE coaching projects; she is one of the authors of the coach educational programme iCoachKids.

The National Sport Forum will also be addressed by Guy Taylor who has been the Director of the Talented Athlete Scholarship Scheme (TASS) from its inception. For over 15 years, TASS has supported thousands of Dual Career athletes, with many achieving notable successes later in their sporting and professional careers. TASS-supported athletes have gone on to win numerous World Championships, over 180 Olympic/Paralympic medals and many hold significant positions of influence in sport and business. He also advises and supports several countries and organisations in the development of their own athlete Dual Career programmes, including the EU, IOC, FIBA, FIFAPro and the Japanese, Indian and Brazilian Governments.

Other local speaker include Dr Andrew Decelis, Pierre Cassar, Sandro Micallef, Dr Chris Bonett, Robert Portelli and Charlene Attard coordinated by Rose Marie Mercieca who led the core team of this event. There will also be interventions from University of Malta, MCAST and National Sports School. SportMalta CEO Mark Cutajar will moderate the sessions on both days.

The National Sport Forum will be officially opened on Friday at 5.00pm by the Honourable Clifton Grima – Parliamentary Secretary Youths, Sports and Voluntary Organisations.   There will also be introductory interventions by Opposition Spokesperson for Sport Ryan Callus and SportMalta chairman Luciano Busuttil.

Friday’s session will tackle the role of the coach and will also deal with parental involvement in sports. There wuill be two parallel session on  the first day of the forum.  One will focus on the commercialisation of sport facilities and another on the possibility of establishing more accademies by SportMalta in partnership with the Sport Organisations.

Saturday’s ssession will commence at 9.30am and will elaborate on a way forward for sport organisations and the groundwork towards a sporting ccareer. The session will carry out a discussion on dual career followed by the role played by media in todays’ sport.

A participation certificate will be presented to all participants at the end of the Forum. The forum will be transmitted live on Facebook page BeActive – SportMalta.