Volleyball is an amateur sport in Scotland. Despite teams from all over the country performing in two male leagues and one female league, the sport does not attract crowds. Players are also required to make the time around their jobs and hobbies if they wish to play at a reasonable level. The best quality of leagues can be found in Eastern Europe, with professional teams a regularity. There are also many semi-professional and professional leagues around Europe in Spain, Italy, Germany, and Turkey. Scotland has no professional or semi-professional teams. However, there is an English Premier League that has many recently successful teams emerging as the best in Europe.
Marc McLaughlin, 26, is Scotland international and professional volleyball player for MEAFC-Miskolc in Hungary. A former Durham, and London Polonia player, he spent the first five years of his career in Glasgow playing for City of Glasgow Ragazzi (Su Ragazzi). Marc thinks the gulf in quality is not that big and that Scottish Volleyball is played to a good level. He said: “The quality is definitely a little bit higher, the only thing is they are playing all the time so they have got better technique, this is really the only thing they are doing so the actual technique that people have here playing at full time themselves, that’s one big difference”.
Marc McLaughlin, MEAFC-Miskolc player
“When you’re playing volleyball only, that’s what you’re thinking about. You go home and you watch tape, that’s what your life is.”
Scottish Volleyball is a sport lacking the funding required to make that next step. The sport will need support from investors, sponsors, and fans to help it to grow into one of the country’s most popular. Marc thinks it is a massive ask for the sport to become professional in Scotland. He said: “Professional? I don’t think in the short-term, there’s a chance it could maybe go semi-pro like there’s a lot of leagues in Europe that are semi-professional so there is a chance that that that could happen but it would require some big sponsors, and even some little sponsors, for the teams just to get a footing, maybe some more advertisement would allow that to happen. It’s going to come from the top, it’s going to come down from the Scottish Volleyball Association and whether they care about indoor volleyball or not…. The question is still out on that one.” Marc’s comments come after there has been constant criticism put on the Scottish Volleyball Association (SVA), this is due to their lack of support for indoor volleyball. The SVA has poured all its money and efforts into growing Scottish Beach Volleyball in recent years, many in the indoor game believe it has been wrongfully treated and should receive more support from its national body.
Marc believes it will come down to grassroots and exposure for the sport that will help it to grow in years to come. He said: “When you start getting younger players in with a wee bit more exposure, maybe bring some foreign players over, even one or two at each club, that could be enough to turn it into a semi-professional league and raise the level of the game in the whole country. In Hungary, say they have a cap on the amount of foreign players, there is a cap of three in each team on the court at any one time, so most of the team is Hungarians and three foreigners, that could be something they could implement in Scotland as well so you then get the homegrown players playing as well as the foreigners, that will raise the level of the sport.”
Undoubtedly there is a struggle to get young people involved in the sport. In Scotland, volleyball is unpopular due to the vast majority of aspiring athletes leaning towards sports such as football, basketball, rugby, and even golf. Marc had his say on how to get more young people involved in Scottish Volleyball. He said: “For me, it’s got to start at Schools, they need to get it in at the school level and continue it through university if that is what they are going for, I think they need to marry up the education and the sporting side of it to keep people in the game.” Edinburgh University is leading the way for volleyball in further education in Scotland, they currently have five competitive teams playing in the top male and female leagues and are a model for other Universities to follow in setting up a Scottish Volleyball club from within their quarters.
In 2012, the Olympics were in London. Team GB had a volleyball team that inspired many to take up the sport, but flash forward over ten years and the team has been discontinued. That left the general public with no insight into volleyball, and if you asked many, they would say they didn’t know that the sport was played in the UK. Marc thinks bringing Team GB back would grow the sport massively. He said: “It’s actually something I’ve been thinking about recently and I was speaking to coaches to see what Team GB could be, I’m not sure there’s much chance that it could happen but it would definitely be something I would be interested in, but, I doubt we would ever get to the Olympics again just because of the rankings. When I was starting out in the sport it was around about the Olympics in London so there was that buzz around, like wow we’ve got a chance here to kickstart, and building a volleyball Legacy was the whole thing. It’s not quite worked out as well as we’d hoped but definitely if Team GB came around I would be all over that. I would love to do something like that.”
Marc believes that a Team GB team will be the best way to bring mass exposure and sponsorships to the sport. He said: “I mean you see the exposure that beach volleyball is getting at the moment and that’s purely because they’ve got some decent athletes playing in England and in the Commonwealth Games, they’re building a programme and a brand around four guys and that is definitely something that could happen in British indoor volleyball but it would take some changes to do it. There are people that can play volleyball and are pretty decent at volleyball, but we’d just need to put them all together on the same court. That’s not me that’ll be able to do that though that’ll need to be the next generation.”
Volleyball in Scotland has a long way to go in becoming more visible and accessible to the wider public, it will take a long period of hard work and investment to bring this drastic change. It is unlikely that the sport will become professional, but it could grow in the next decade by bringing the grassroots level of volleyball to a new high, using social media outlets to gain exposure for the sport, and in turn attracting spectators and gaining sponsorship. The success of Scottish Volleyball will come down to the investment given by the SVA and governing bodies, which will allow the sport to become one of Scotland’s best and not let it be forgotten or hidden from the public eye.
Johnny Orr
Comments