Past England international hockey player and two-time Olympic hockey coach Gavin Featherstone is one of very few authors outside of academia and/or directly involved with The Hockey Museum who is actively publishing on the history and development of hockey. His books continue a long tradition of hockey-specific self-publishing that is well evidenced in The Hockey Museum’s extensive library.

Back in 2015, Gavin published The Hockey Dynamic: Examining the Forces that Shaped the Modern Game, a book which was not officially available outside of the USA. Yet in October of this year, he published a revised version making it available for worldwide purchase. Re-edited and updated with new photographs, the recent edition has a concluding chapter in which Gavin brings his reflections and insight up to the present day.

The Hockey Dynamic charts a number of seismic, modernising changes that have occurred in hockey across the latter half of the twentieth- and into the first decades of the twenty-first century. With chapters tackling evolution in pitches, equipment, sporting culture, club structures and governing bodies’ strategic decisions, as well as the stories of notable individual innovators, its narrative breadth affords broad appeal in the otherwise niche subject of hockey.

Gavin’s storylines are informed by his experiences at the top level of hockey, both in the UK and overseas, as well as by the people he has met along the way. These provide him with a valuable perspective on hockey’s dynamic developments which he himself has lived through and in some cases directly impacted on. Undoubtedly, these are stories penned through Gavin’s unique lens. Anyone who knows Gavin will tell you that he is not short of an opinion, and the pages of The Hockey Dynamic are full of them; yet these are informed by hindsight and balanced by the presentation of interviews with other movers, shakers and influencers within the modern hockey world.

Despite the recent editorial updates, some areas of the book still refer to events from the 2010s in present tense (as per the ‘first edition’) which can feel slightly disjointing to the reader, yet it does not feel like a dated book. Far from it, even without the inclusion of a new chapter in this ‘second edition’ – a chapter which comments on the ambition, for better or worse, of the Hockey India League and the strategic challenges and decisions of the International Hockey Federation’s (FIH) in recent years – there is an energy and immediacy to much of Gavin’s writing that gives his narratives a compelling relevance.

The Hockey Museum is only 12 years old – the first and only public heritage organisation in the world dedicated to hockey. As such, there is much still to be told concerning the rich history of our game. As Curator of The Hockey Museum, I am happy to admit to acquiring new or deeper understanding of some of the characters and key developments within the modern game which I have not lived through myself. Particularly enjoyable were the chapters covering the early development of and commercial competition around artificial pitch surfaces, the pioneering introduction of video analysis technology, and the evolution of hockey goalkeeping equipment and its manufacturers and suppliers – all important areas for the Museum to engage with and successfully interpret to tell the inspirational stories of our dynamic, evolving game. The Hockey Dynamic adds real value to this endeavour – an insightful read for hockey history enthusiasts everywhere.

Shane Smith
Curator, The Hockey Museum
Order the book from gavinfeatherstone.co.uk 
A limited number of copies are available to be purchased and collected in person from The Hockey Museum in Woking.