The news of the week (21)

Hello, here is another short newsletter

Is there an issue for FISTF? - Last week, I was ratjer enthusiast about the future of FISTF because the end of Piero Capponi's presidency and the hope to have elections in February was very positive for the future of the sport. Of course, many things need to be built again from scratch but there was a strong hope that good people could build a strong future by working hand in hand. Unfortunately, things change very fast and not always in the right direction. Laurent Garnier, the General Secretary of FISTF, was named President of FISTF and, by surprise, he was "confirmed" as being president till the next Congress... in 2015. The simple fact that there might be no elections in February proves the people int he FISTF Board only think about their own interests and not about the good of the game and the needs of the community. Having a Board working against the basic principles of democracy and against the expectations of the players and the national associations will prevent out community to work serenely.

In such a situation, WASPA might take more and more importance because I expect many disappointed players to look for "something else" and hopefully WASPA could give a positive answer to the questions of the players who are unhappy with FISTF. As several national associations have already written to Laurent Garnier to say they are unhappy about the latest changes, we hope that the FISTF Board will answer to the expectations of the players and that good sense will prevail. Until possible elections, a lot of things might happen. Wait & see...

The priorities of WASPA - Right now, there isn't much going on in the WASPA calendar. There is only one tournament to be played this month but there are good plans to have more tournaments in the next few months. Hopefully more events will take place in December and in 2012. Having more tournaments and more nations involved is definately the top priority of WASPA for the next few months.

Competion: create the new WASPA banner - I recently had several messages from players telling me the WASPA blog is fine but they don't like the picture on top of the blog. So there is an open competition to give the possibility to everyone to send proposal for a new banner. All ideas are welcome. The banner can just be a picture but the WASPA logo can also be included. All proposals should be sent by e-mail to Vincent.cop@rsca.com
Thanks in advance!

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 Germany, the US, the UK, Spain, Finland, Greece, Belgium, Russia, Malta and Australia.

Keep on flicking,
Vincent