Players tend to judge these things from an inward perspective, where the people that actually make these decisions make them based on a range of factors. In most cases pool availability is the overriding factor, followed by infrastructure factors, weather and other competitions.

It is fine for an elite player to say that juniors should not be a factor, but at the last 2 commission meetings junior competition was overwhelmingly supported by a large majority of federations. These are the people that make the policy for your federations and indeed the sport at a world level.

I agree that most sports host separate juniors competition, but with a small sport like underwater hockey competing numbers are paramount to make these sort of competitions viable.

The way the competition was scheduled in NZ was not a success in a large number of peoples eyes due to the down time that was associated with the schedule. Having said this it was a difficult task for the organisers with the low participation numbers and would have, I believe worked well if more countries played.

Regards.
WTD