The news of the week (20)

Hello everyone, here are the news of the week.

What future for FISTF? - Important facts happened in the last few days in FISTF. After the European cups played in Slovenia, president Piero Capponi decided to resign and he was followed in his decision by Sports Director Stefano De Francesco. Both men had an important role in the FISTF Board and their decision will probably involve a lot of important changes in the future. Piero Capponi said elections should be held in February at the Major of Mons but this has to be confirmed. Whatever happens, it will be difficult for FISTF to get back on the right track after all the mess of the last two years. Since a few people decided to take over things after the world cup in the Netherlands in 2009, a lot of promises have been made to change the main international body. The new Boards, firstly led by Malta's Silvio Catania and later by Spain's Piero Capponi, wanted to make a more professional game, to introduce professional rules and to get more media coverage and sponsors. Even if some ideas were good, they were probably not realistic and the community is not ready to change his attitude. It's not only about the game itself but new rules about the size of the figures have not been appreciated by many players and there were some incidents last week-end in Slovenia when players were told they were not allowed to play because the figures were smaller than 27 mm.

So what will be the direction of the new Board? Will people continue to dream about a professional game or will we get back to a more "human scale" where the game remains the priority? Should we insist on having large venue with perfect tables or should we just insist on having tournaments with many games for every player and a better organisation of games? There were no scoreboards at the Europa Cup and nowhere to have a drink or something to eat in the hall and this is certainly not what players expect from a major tournament, in particular when they travel thousands of kilometers to play.

It will take some time before elections are held and before new people take over things again from scratch. The fact the next world cup will be held in July in Greece involves it will certainly be one of the worst events in terms of attendance. The new Board has there to take the right options to make the world cup something special and a priority for all players who are qualified to play.

The future of WASPA will of course depend on the future options of FISTF. Some voices say both FISTF and WASPA should merge and an amateur circuit should be organized under FISTF banner. This will only be possible if the new Board is able to make a difference between the players who just play for fun and those who play to win.

For the moment, WASPA is still taking its own way with a small circuit of tournaments and hopefully more clubs and nations will join the circuit in the next few weeks. Ideas and suggestions are always welcome so please don't hesitate to send your views by e-mail at vincent.cop@rsca.com

Another tournament in Malta - The next tournament to be organized by Attard SC will take place on December 9 in the evening and details are available from Joe Debono at jmdebono@onvol.net

Congratulations Pisa and Bologna - The WASPA community wold like to congratulate the team of Black & Blue Pisa, winner of the Champion's League, and the team of Bologna Tigers, winner of the Europa League. Both tournaments took place last week-end in Nova Gorica, Slovenia.

Forthcoming events - Here is a list of the forthcoming WASPA tournaments. We hope many more will be added in the near future. You can see the contact person for every tournament in the section "forthcoming events" (on the right column).
- November 27 - Tournament in Barcelona (Spain)
- December 9 - Tournament in Attard (Malta)
- December - Tournament in Johannesburg (South Africa) -> Details coming soon
- December - Tournament in Templeuve (Belgium) -> Details coming soon
- Tournament in Nicosia (Cyprus) -> Details coming soon

Top 10 nations this week on the blog - This week the bigger number of visitors were from Finland, Spain, Italy, Greece, germany, Singapore, the US, Canada, France, and Malta.

Keep on flicking,
Vincent