Communication is king when it comes to making England Squash work for its membership. And that is at the heart of Joey Barrington’s aims after his recent appointment as England Squash’s membership and commercial manager. And the former England international’s passion for his new role is palpable.
The range of his compass will take in a myriad of other functions, including the resurrection of the flatlining Premier Squash League. But there is no denying that Barrington junior is determined that the perhaps previously undervalued ES membership will be positioned firmly at the top of his agenda as he looks to provide value, clear communication, and inclusion with the governing body’s core stakeholders.
As he revealed exclusively to Squash Mad, at the heart of this is a revamp of the existing malfunctioning membership function: “Before the old membership system was through the clubs and it was reliant on the clubs relaying how many people they were paying the fee for.
“But when England Squash wanted to reach out to the members they would have to go back through the clubs and not all clubs necessarily had their details and accurate numbers, so that depended on someone being tech savvy to ensure it functioned. In short, England Squash did not have a direct communication channel with its individual members.
“So this is the point of the whole new system we are developing. In a digital age you want to go straight to your client that is why it is so vital to change this aspect of the membership relationship.”
Barrington says he wants to engage with those who want to give back to squash to help grow it. He admits that the members are not clear on what England Squash actually does and, by hook or by crook, he wants to improve channels.
He says: “The quality and volume of information to our communities needs to improve, and in particular the grass roots programmes, of which there are so many fine initiatives, which are just not being communicated to the counties and people who need to know.
“I just want the majority of people to be happy with the membership benefits which will hopefully be done by the end of year with the new membership to roll out by April.”
So what is the bottom line of the new impending membership package?
“My role is to come up with a benefits package which suits the general scope of the membership from beginners all the way to veterans and covering all angles. From that we can build on more benefits as we go along.
“The other side of the coin is that there is the club membership which is separate and is done on the amount of courts they have. So for example if it is a two court club it is £75 per court and it is capped at six courts, so £450.
“We want to come back with a grant system, where a decent percentage of membership (funds) will then be given back to the counties to help them develop their own projects, so it is an incentive for them to be on board and for the counties to mandate the membership would be really helpful for England Squash.
“So we are looking at a £15 membership to start with a £25 membership which has more benefits.”
Not surprisingly Barrington was in no mood to underestimate the need to take care of existing partners as well as make new friendships. “There is work to do with existing partners to make that relationship much better,” he adds, “but we have had an assessment on all the assets England Squash have by an exterior agency and the figures coming back are very promising.
“Of course with Olympic 2028 inclusion this will hopefully open the door up to more governing funding for grassroots and also at the elite level, but the development of the former is foremost.
“Then it is about looking at various industries, corporate, then squash specific branded, so I will be going off and speaking to a lot of different areas in terms of their potential interest in squash.
“We now have a presentation in place to sell England Squash to interested parties and those that might become so and that is exciting as it hasn’t been done before.”
And then there’s the Professional Squash League. “We have the conundrum of the PSL now reduced to four teams and suspended and my initial solution is talking with the PSA to find a solution and perhaps change the formatting and get that back in motion,” reveals Barrington.
“From an ex-player point of view this is the first time in my life we haven’t got an active league, which is unacceptable and must be sorted and I will try my best to rejuvenate that. We need a PSA input here as the PSL is made up of, taking away the younger England players, of PSA World Tour players.”
With plenty of courts lying empty, Barrington has a missionary zeal when it comes to changing that: “We are partnering with PSA as there is a huge drive with federations, but we have the advantage that they are based in Leeds, so we want to develop a drive to increase club awareness and bring players to clubs.
“We are focusing on grassroots with rebound walls, outdoor courts and how we can put them up in playgrounds, in deprived areas of inner cities where they don’t have facilities and we have two options in this respect.
“Then we have clubs who are not utilising their courts and for racketball and squash both games are rebound sports and are both played on a squash court, so we need a cohesive connection with racketball and any other rebound game.
“That is what we also need at grassroots level where we also need bigger balls and smaller rackets for the kids.
“We have to open up everyone’s mind to the fact we can unite rebound games to the benefit of our game as a whole whether that is one wall, two or three walls and then going on to a squash court and filling the voids of the missing generations which aren’t playing.”
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