I said that I think that the attitude that people should come to you to train you is selfish, and I stick by that. Sven and his brother may indeed be the most unselfish people in the Netherlands, but I think that expecting others to come and train you every week is selfish.

He does do a lot to promote the lower grades and that is wonderful for hockey in NL- he should get credit for that I agree. However he also dismisses the contribution of others and especially of the bigger clubs, and that is rather short sighted.

And no Sven - Inge and myself were in Njord for a training session before Eric started training with Argonauta, and before they made it to the first class in NL. Eric then started coming to Argonauta to train so that he could learn from us, and subsequently take what he has learnt back to Eindhoven. Good idea.

As far as the development of juniors go and your example - the simple truth is that those juniors may have been told that if they want to get good enough to play worlds - international level - then they should come to Argonauta, or Barramoenda now, in fact Barramoenda is currently the best choice in NL. Argonauta players are typically 30 - 50% of the selection, I have yet to see a Tilburger in the team. Surely if you are an aspiring hockeyer you would prefer to train somewhere where you can build to being National champion and an international player?

However, I absolutely agree that it is not very friendly if things happened as you described. These things have a tendency to be exagerated though, and it wouldn't suprise me if that was said by a 14 year old to your team.

About your team being lazy...did you notice my summary of the skills required to be an international? Swimming is 50% of it.

I can show you a new skill at the Argonauta tournament in a couple of weeks. I saw Tom do it once... I will see if I can flick the puck into my own head. That should impress you more than Benson passing 5 opposition players with 'simple' sidestep and scoring.

Better yet - the most beautiful thing that you can see while playing hockey is a team playing well together. Hopefully Once Were Warriors at the Argonauta tournament can give you some examples of what top hockey can be.

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Faster than a speeding puck...