At this time the directors from 126 hockey nations (14 couldn’t even be bothered) world wide voted in Tayyab Ikram as president of the FIH. As predicted…
The reason being easy. The FIH has 140 members (= nations with nationwide associations or NA). Every NA has 1 vote within the elections. Regardless in the event you signify an NA with no enjoying members (as in zero… sure these exist I’m informed) or one with +100K members, it’s 1 vote per NA.
In the meanwhile we’re missing severely in transparency and accountability. Representatives of the NA’s can’t be held accountable for his or her vote due to secret voting. The secrecy of a vote is sacred on the subject of elections by people. Nevertheless it’s a sacrilege on the subject of folks voting on behalf of others (folks they signify) for my part.
My tough estimate is a few 20 of those NA’s even have a wholesome inhabitants of hockey gamers and in whole perhaps 40 additionally assist the philosophy represented by Coudron, with a precedence on rising the variety of gamers. This implies some 100 or so NA’s for my part exist primarily to assist their administration and ensure they proceed to obtain cash from the federal government and the Olympic motion. The latter usually tend to assist Ikram who will try to get them their funds from nationwide Olympic associations, with out actually asking them to decide to the troublesome activity of rising the variety of gamers of their nation.
As written 2 months earlier than this election in “A conflict of cultures”
The vote was 79 vs 47 in favour of Ikram…
So now we all know the why, the how and the what with reference to this election. We’re left with “what subsequent”
What subsequent?
In my perception the FIH will turn into even much less the worldwide federation of hockey and much more the federation of worldwide hockey. So extra stress for home hockey as we all know it.
It means with the intention to please the supply of all cash, the IOC, the FIH will choose the sport of Hockey5s over the prevailing format.
In Europe the membership tradition focussed on leisure sport for household & pals will slowly wither and get replaced by industrial entities promoting subscriptions so folks can play every time they need and whoever they need. Members turn into purchasers. In the identical method you’ll guide a spherical of golf, a recreation of padel or a gaggle session of no matter health hype in your native health club. Solely workforce sports activities who can set up themselves as a enterprise will survive. Hockey can have a troublesome time within the shadow of larger sports activities. Soccer will stay the exception as a result of that sport has been to the folks in energy what “panem et circenses” was to the rulers in historical Rome. However no matter our directors attempt to promote us, hockey just isn’t an enormous sport on the planet. Pretending to be among the many huge boys will get you damage finally…
No matter comes subsequent, regardless of the route hockey will take. For me, we left behind some true values I imagine in. So I’ll step again. Perhaps for now, perhaps for good. We’ll see the place these people take us…
The tip of hockey?
In 2018 I wrote a column with the title “The tip of hockey“.
The tip of hockey is getting close to… Or at the very least the top of hockey as we all know it.
At this time our sport took one other step into that route in my perception. There’ll nonetheless be an FIH and the title of hockey will nonetheless be listed as an Olympic sport (perhaps). Almost certainly although, not the sport I’ll recognise or love… So even when the top of hockey is a bit melodramatic, it can in all probability be the top of studiohockey.com speaking about this explicit matter within the hope of avoiding what I predicted.
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