Giving you a clearer picture of roller hockey
Ten teams two days of roller hockey and one winner, CP Ribes from Spain. Congratulations to our European cousins from Catalunia who won the final beating Kings Lynn in a carefully planed attacking match. Teams from as far south as Plymouth all came together in the East of England to play for this prestigious trophy. This was a two day event starting on Saturday in two venues, Burwell and Soham and ending on Sunday at Soham with the final matches.
Sometimes something funny happens in our sport of Roller Hockey and when its caught on video camera we can all share in the laughter. This clip was taken yesterday at the warm up match at the start of day three of the 2009 Coupe des Nations in Montreux, Switzerland. No people wear hurt in the making of this video. Ladies match, Juventus v Diessbach.
SCRA St Omer had a convincing win (4-1) over bottom league team Nantes last Saturday at St Omer’s home venue. SCRA St Omer are currently the French National Division one league leaders and with only three matches left in the season St Omer are on target to win Frances top Roller Hockey league.
For a third year in a row England Roller Hockey teams are participating in one the most pretigious tournaments in Portugal,
this year I have decided to take a Minors (players born in 1996 & 1997) and Intermediates (players born in 1994) teams, Minors are players involved on 2011 & 2012 projects and Intermediates are players involved on 2010 project. These projects are part of the Development Plan for our sport to develope players to attend their first European Under 17 Championships.
This tournament will take place in Sesimbra a town half hour away from Lisbon, starting on Thursday and finishing on Saturday. The team will fly out on Thursday morning and will return to England on Sunday morning. This tournament will have 4 teams participating in each level from Under 11 to Juniors giving an opportunity for our players to have a couple of competitive games and watch quality Portuguese teams.
I understand that there is considerable confusion over what is the Conference System of Competition that we are playing this season. Below I have tried to explain it as simply as possible.
In order for there to be a Club National Champion of England, it was decided to introduce a Conference System of competition for this season.
The Conference System is split into sections, in order to save the cost of traveling if we had introduced a National League at all age levels.
The first section relies on the Regional Leagues from the three Regions, North, East and South, and works as follows :-
At any of the age levels, the top team in the Regional League wins a place directly to the Finals taking place over the weekend of the 4th/5th July.
The second and third teams go into a play-off taking place over the weekend of 6th/7th June from which the best team will make up the fourth team in the finals.
The Play-offs will be run as 2 pools of three.
Each pool will be played as a round robin with the winners of each pool playing for the fourth place available in the Finals.
Therefore, the Finals, comprising four teams at each age level will be played as a round robin to determine the Club Champions of England.
Keith Allen
August 9th, 2009 sees the 8th running of the Goodwood Roller Marathon. Held at the historic Goodwood motor racing circuit near Chichester, West Sussex, the event offers the opportunity to skate outside, on smooth, traffic free tarmac.
The marathon distance of 42 kilometres is not the only distance on offer. A mini-marathon (5 miles), half marathon (13 miles) and double marathon (56 miles) are all available options.
