RACC Competition Seminar was held Aug 17-19

Helsinki – Finland, August 29, 2012: The aim of the seminar was to set a common objective for the development of the IFF Events. There were 29 participants from 18 Member Associations – Australia, Austria, Belarus, Canada, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Latvia, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and Ukraine. The participants were welcomed by Mr John Liljelund, IFF Secretary General, and presentations were made by RACC Chairman and IFF Vice-President, Mr Filip Suman, and RACC ExCo Members, Mr Martin Wolmhed and Mr Ari Vehniäinen.

There was a lot of information presented by the RACC, including an explanation of the ranking system and of the quota system, which is used to determine how many continental qualification spots there are for each tournament. The result of the seminar was a number of ideas and proposals, which both the RACC and the CB has to work with in the future.

One of the goals set during the Associations meeting (held in St Gallen, Switzerland in December 2011) was to close the gap between the big and smaller Associations in the WFC and, based on this, a new model for the Adult WFC was thoroughly discussed and will be presented at the upcoming CB meeting.

From the discussions about the U19 WFC, the present system was considered to work well but there should be less direct qualified teams and more spots to qualify for. The Member Associations also said that they would prefer smaller qualification tournaments with only 4-6 teams, as opposed to the 8-team qualification tournament that will be played in Italy, 5th-9th September. It was also suggested that the Men’s U19 WFC final round could be increased to 6 days but Women’s U19 should stay at 5 days.

The term (dates) of the U19 WFC Final round was thoroughly discussed both in groups and in the whole seminar. The conclusion was that the current term or possibly one week earlier is the least worst dates and that a certain flexibility is needed due to needs and possibilities of the organisers.

IFF Competition Coordinator, Ms Sarah Mitchell, discussed the team information that is required before each tournament. There were suggestions about how the information could be handled better and more easily for both the competition office and the participating teams. Apart from just the team lists, IFF requires photographs of each of the players and team officials, and the importance of the quality and format of these photos was stressed, especially now that TV broadcasters are accessing the IFF Statistics system for information.

The seminar was considered very useful and there were wishes for more seminars: Rules & Regulations, Development & Marketing, and Event Organising. As a result of the seminar, the RACC has made a number of proposals to the CB, which will be considered at their next meeting in Frankfurt on 31st August. —- IFF