Westmeath Sports Partnership Coordinator Tony Wheat was a guest on Midlands 103’s Heath and Fitness Show recently ( March 22).
Presented by David Hollywood and airing every Friday between 7pm and 8pm , the show examines ways for people to become healthier and fitter.
The shows chats to people involved in sports and fitness from all across the midlands and explores some of the people and places most associated with sport and physical activity in the region.
During the interview Tony outlined the work of the Sports Partnership, described some of his own sporting exploits and also explained how the Sports Partnership and its staff can assist and enable sports clubs and groups through funding and training opportunities.
The interview with Tony begins at 36:26.
Interview transcription:
David Hollywood: What is sports? For some of us, it’s there for us to find a channel within which to compete. For many of us, and as we learn more, it’s simply there for us to move our bodies. And from a very early age, it’s been identified as a key component to a healthy lifestyle. The state is also obliged to help us in our procedures, of course, and we have representatives of the government through the Midlands to bring that. So, Westmeath Sports Partnership are exactly one of those, and very glad to say joining us on Health and Fitness this evening is Westmeath Sports Partnership Coordinator, Tony Wheat. Tony, thanks very much for joining us on Health and Fitness this evening.
Tony Weat: No problem. Thanks very much for having me, David.
DH: So look, I know Westmeath Sports Partnership. They’re very much saying they’re dedicated to the promotion and development of sport in County Westmeath. From the Sports Partnership’s perspective, why is that important?
TW: Well, I think it’s important, as you kind of said in your introduction, that everybody, or as many people as possible, can lead an active lifestyle. You know, there are many well-known benefits to being active, both not just physical benefits of having a physically active body and the sort of things that come around the associated benefits of that from a health perspective, but also from a mental health benefit, which has obviously become increasingly more of a focus in recent years. I think there are other benefits as well to being involved in sport, you know, sort of social benefits, community cohesion, friendship. There are just any number of reasons to be involved, and obviously the enjoyment factor as well. You know, it’s something sport—generally people take part in because they enjoy it. And I think, you know, we all work hard and we all need an outlet sometimes, and sport is often a very good way to have an outlet, to sort of let off a bit of steam, and also enjoy yourself.
DH: Just out of curiosity, if you’re letting off steam and you’re engaging with sport, what has ever taken your interest or fancy, or what have been the things that you’ve dabbled in?
TW: For me personally, I’ve been involved mainly in rugby throughout my life, both as a player and administrator. So that’s kind of been my main focus. You know, playing it to a reasonably decent standard back in England when I was there, and now I’m involved off the field in the judicial side, the disciplinary side of things. So, if players are misbehaving and sent off, they usually come my way. But I’m also, strangely enough, involved in American football. I’ve been a fan since I was a kid, and I write for an American website and also I appear on a podcast occasionally as well. So, a little bit of everything. Played a bit of golf as well—great badly—but that just goes back to the enjoyment. I enjoy it despite not being very good.
DH: Yeah, and there are great lessons to be learned from playing golf and rugby because they have such value structures in them. I suppose that’s one of the great benefits of all sports is that they’ve been there for so long and they do imbue us with the values that they promote themselves. Let’s bring it back to the task at hand here. You’re the coordinator for Westmeath Sports Partnership. Now, I imagine that is a job that has maybe some dense organizational responsibilities, but at the end of the day, you’re delivering services to people that make a difference in their lives. So, are you able to take motivation and satisfaction personally from the fact that that’s the case?
TW: Yeah, I think I feel very fortunate to be working in a sector that is something that I enjoy sort of personally and socially as well. You know, it’s great at the level that we work at, which is sort of the participation—actually getting people active and participating, you know, some people who may not otherwise be active. And we target certain groups in certain areas where, you know, we need to try and get increased levels of participation. And it is extremely rewarding to see the difference that we can make where people who do get involved, you know, you see the smile on their face, you see the enjoyment, you see the fact that they want to come back. You know, I think the fact that if we do courses, we get huge demand for follow-up courses as well because people are enjoying what we provide. So, yeah, it’s very satisfying to work in this kind of sector, for sure.
DH: Talk us through what your day-to-day is. How a working week typically looks like from the coordinator’s perspective.
TW: Okay, so I’m the coordinator, so effectively that’s the manager of the partnership. And we have a team of six people—that’s actually five, we have a vacant post, but it should normally be six. Those local Sports Partnerships, and there’s one in each county across the country, they vary in size dependent upon the area. Now, we’re sort of a relatively small area, but we have six staff. So, my job is kind of to manage the team. So, that involves talking to the guys around the programs that are running. We have three development officers who predominantly organize and facilitate the programs and projects that we run. So, we have a Community Sport Development Officer, we have a Sports Inclusion Disability Officer, and an Outdoors Development Officer. And so I manage them, and they work on their programs and I kind of liaise with them around that. We have a Communications Officer and we also have an Administrator who sort of ties everything together that we do as well.
I manage that team. I also kind of look at things from the strategic level as well, around funding applications. You know, obviously, yesterday the funding allocated funding announcement was made by Sport Ireland, but it’s not just that funding that we get. We get funding through other sources including Healthy Ireland, dormant accounts, which is run through Sport Ireland. So, I’m kind of responsible for that end of things as well. And I also meet with a lot of the managers of the stakeholders that we work with, so whether it’s through Healthy Ireland or whether it’s with the youth work sector or whether it’s national governing bodies of sport. I also meet regularly with my counterparts in sport across the country to make sure that we’re all singing off the same hymn sheet sort of from the national agenda, but applying it locally to our own counties. So yeah, the week’s fairly busy generally, but as I said before, it’s rewarding because I’m not sure how many people would sort of say that they get up in the morning and really enjoy going to work to do their job. So, I’m lucky in that regard.
DH: Participation is objective number one for every Sports Partnership across the country then?
TW: Yeah, pretty much. It’s kind of getting, it’s providing and presenting as many opportunities to take part for as many different groups as possible. So, there are a number of target groups that we have, including women and girls, older adults, and people with disabilities, people from socially excluded backgrounds and areas. And, you know, there’s a real focus now on equality and inclusion, and part of our role is to make sure that we provide opportunities for those people that may otherwise not have them. So, you know, that’s a really big focus both for ourselves and LSPs across the country in general.
DH: The funding that was announced, as you alluded to there, is just over €1,000,000 for the Midlands counties, Laois, Offaly, and Westmeath, and just over around €300,000, I think, for Westmeath. This funding then specifically, when it lands, do you know where it’s going because it has to be earmarked or highlighted prior to the funding coming through, or it lands and then you have to determine how to use it?
TW: Well, we apply for the funding back end of the previous year. So, kind of October 2023, we applied for 2024 funding, which obviously the final details were announced yesterday. We had some idea of what we were going to get, but yeah, we earmark what we’re going to put the money to. So, you know, that goes into our salaries—obviously there are six of us here, paying for those roles. It pays for administration, it pays for marketing, communications. And I think, perhaps, one of the most important things that it pays for is program delivery. So, it allows us to run a lot of the programs that we run with groups and in Westmeath. So, there’s a small amount of funding in there as well that’s for grant funding. So, we also include that in the application. So, yeah, we kind of know what we’re going to do with the money before we get it because we earmark it in the application.
DH: Final question then, is spinning off of that: look, the money is… when it comes to sports investment and the benefits that we get from it on a community basis in the Midlands, do you think it’s good value for money?
TW: I’d say it’s excellent value for money. I’d say it’s something that’s probably been underappreciated until reasonably recently. I mean, I think that, you know, I’ve been here for five years now, and the investment level is going up every year. And I think that the proof of the pudding is in the outcomes. You know, the participation numbers are going up. You can see the difference, you know, just—I can only speak for Westmeath at this point—but locally, the more we do, the more people seem to want us to do. So, you know, we advertise our courses and programs and they’re booked out within 15-20 minutes in a lot of cases. The demand is so high. And it’s almost like the snowball effect, I think, is that the more that you do, the more awareness people in the area seem to have, the more contact that we get from other local community groups.
So, I think it really has a positive effect on, you know, if you’re a community group and you hear that there’s a community group locally that got a program or project, you might want some of it as well, and that’s what we tend to find. So, I think it’s excellent value for money for any number of reasons, whether it’s physical health, mental health, community cohesion, integration. There are so many boxes that it ticks. I don’t have any doubt that the value for money is extremely high.
DH: Yeah, I’d be minded to agree with you, Tony. Tony Wheat, Coordinator of Westmeath Sports Partnership, power to you and your team and the very best of luck for the forthcoming next number of months, and so on. We’ll catch up with you down the line.
TW: Thanks very much. Thanks for having me.
DH: That is Health and Fitness for another week. Thanks again everyone for taking the time with…