The keenly contested Sports Administrator of the Year accolade went to hockey’s Niamh Goddard at last week’s Isle of Man Sports Awards.

Niamh has been key in ensuring island junior sides, like the weekend’s successful girls under-14 team, can now compete in England Hockey’s various knockout competitions.

She spent 2024 continuing to be a key figure in all six of the island’s age-group representative sides, helping to organise their training, fixtures, finance and kit. This is often a time-intensive and thankless task.

With regular off-island trips for cup competitions across all the age-groups from under 12 to under 16, Niamh's hard ensures not only that the Isle of Man's talented youngsters are provided regular opportunities to test themselves against a higher standard of opposition.

Niamh also makes sure that the trips go as smoothly as possible.

On receiving the Media Isle of Man-sponsored award at Thursday evening’s ceremony at the Villa Marina, the Bacchas player said: ‘All the hard work is worth it when you see the success of the juniors.’

Niamh hopes that the success of island players like Sienna Dunn and Archie Cox with England and Wales’ respective age-group teams will be an inspiration for others to follow in the footsteps of.

‘Both Sienna and Archie have come through this junior pathway we have developed. It’s given the talented players somewhere to train together and play matches and expose them to a higher standard of opposition across.

‘It’s great to see what Sienna and Archie have achieved and hopefully we’ll have a few more that go on to achieve similar things.’

- More from last week’s Isle of Man Sports Awards in this week’s Manx Independent - on sale Thursday morning.