Poll for dates for Worlds 2008

Lena10 made the coment that she would like to see a poll of what month Worlds plyers would prefer the the Competition to be. It seems that currently no dates are confermed yet for Durban, South Africa 2008.

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Underwater Hockey Rules!

Hello all, first I must set the record straight. At Sheffield July was the proposed best time for the worlds. The main reason for this was that it coincided with most if not all countries school holidays. This is an important factor for a number of reasons, firstly if it is not in July a number of countries have said that they will not be able to send junior teams.

Secondly, these junior teams contribute sign on fees towards the competition, with the strong possibility of there being less teams due to leaving CMAS, the organisers have to consider registration fees. The fewer teams there are means that registration costs will be dearer. Further to this there are the ethical questions of making sure our sport grows by the promotion of junior competition.

On the opposite side of this argument is the fact that it is the holiday season in South Africa so things do have the potential to be dearer. Having said this one has to consider the exchange rate in South Africa which is extremely good to most countries and could possibly offset the dearer tariffs.

I am currently in discussion with South Africa to achieve the best outcome for hockey overall, I hope this sheds some light on the factors to be considered when making these types of decisions.

Cheers.
WTD

WTD,

Thank you for clarifying & updating us on this issue.
It seems there's alot of concern & questions around this issue... Your input is really appreciated.


There is a better way to let your meembers know what's happening.....Can we interview you on this & podcast it?
It'd give everyone some comfort to know what's up straight from the horse's mouth.

How about it?

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Slayer of Trolls amongst other things.
Made for the Love of a Good Woman, and not a bad little player too ;-)
Chumba Concept Salon
Professional Hair Stylist

WTD has agreed to be interviewed on the issues surrounding the World's 2008.

See the Podcast forum for further details

__________________
Slayer of Trolls amongst other things.
Made for the Love of a Good Woman, and not a bad little player too ;-)
Chumba Concept Salon
Professional Hair Stylist

I know that when I was at school (those were the days)...even while completing VCE and a bachelor degree they were more then supportive of giving me time off to represent my country.
I don't think that decisions on when to host a World Championships should be based around the junior players availability but more so when the elites teams are available. Most sports at an elite level host there junior competition at separate time's to their senior competition. However I also think that it worked quite well in NZ to have the masters and juniors at a slightly different time. That way they can still help contribute to fees and interacte with the elite players but also pool timed is freed up to shorten the elite competition.

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

I don't think that anyone is disagreeing that juniors shouldn't be 'a' factor but not 'the' factor. Everyone I know in UWH is all for promoting junior players.
Luckily as you point out there are a number of considerations being made in order to come up with the decision so I am sure it will be a good one.

The Elite players definitely had more down time in Sheffield then in Christchurch so I assume that it must be one of those many hard jobs that's virtually impossible to get right for everyone.

Thanks for all your hard work.

Please keep us updated on any future happenings.

Looking forward to hearing your pod cast!