The news of the week (2)

Hello everybody, just a quick message to keep you updated about the latest WASPA news. We had a great week full of good news and promising developments. Last week we were happy to learn that a tournament would take place in Stockholm, Sweden but more great news came from Scandinavia. It looks indeed that it will be a very international tournament as many foreign players will be there. Marcus Tilgner (Germany) and Robert Green (Australia) had already confirmed they would make the trip but we know that there will be an Italian, a couple of Finns and even David Crémoux, a french player who is living in Sweden for many years who is very excited to start playing again as he was one of the best players in France 20 years ago. This kind of achievements proves WASPA can help the global community of table football/subbuteo fans to grow in numbers. last but not least, Jeremy Bradley from England will more than probably be in Sweden at the time of the tournament so there are great chances he will be able to take part.

Malta is there - I must say that iw as a bit worried about the position of the clubs from Southern Europe when Is tarted the WASPA project. Now that it has been confirmed that there will be a tournament in Malta (and there is interest from Italy and Greece), I feel like we are reaching a growing number of players. The Attard club has already 12 entries for the tournament to be held on July 14, which is a great number.

Singapore, the hot place in Asia - When I was told the club of Leste Aquila would host a tournament in Singapore on August 14, I was very happy. Singapore has been the most active country on the asian scene for the last 10 years and the local organizers are doing a fantastic job. Singapore has now four active clubs and the level of the local players is growing very quickly. Players like Erza Aripin and Christopher Soh have already attended FISTF world cups and players like John Ho and Den Mulia are probably the best players on the continent. As the Singapore association is doing a great job to promote the game, we hope in the near future there will be some clubs in other asian countries, possibly in Malaysia (there is also a club in Hong Kong run by an Italian who lives there for years and there is a very small group of players in Japan, too).

Table hockey - Benoît Racette from Canada is working on a project of "table ice hockey" and he would be happy to hear suggestions from as many subbuteo players as possible. Feel free to contact him at canadatabletopgames@gmail.com

The future? - Any idea, any tournament request, any question can be sent directly to my e-mail address. It will be a pleasure to answer every message.

Top 10 nations this week on the blog - This week the bigger number of visitors were from Italy, Singapore, Germany, the United Kingdom, Belgium, Finland, Greece, Malta, Portugal and the United States.

Facebook - WASPA has now a page on Facebook and 38 Facebook users have already joined, which helps them to be updated on a daily base.

Keep on flicking,
Vincent

First tournament in Singapore

The Leste' Aquila SC in Singapore will be holding a WASPA tournament on august 14 in the premises of the club. So far Tan Kok Wee, John Ho, Noor Haikal, Jaslin Tan and Rudy Norita have confirmed their attendance. The others are welcome to play :-)

Tournament in Malta

It is now confirmed the club of Attard (Malta) will host a WASPA tournament on July 14 at 6.30 pm. For more information contact Joe Debono by phone 21414712 – 27414712 – 99405867) or e-mail: jmdebono@onvol.net
There are already 10 registered players for the tournament, which are: Joseph M.Debono, Gordon Caruana, Robert Azzopardi, Marco Mifsud, Maria Coppola, Sharlo Barbara, Etienne Deguara, Lon Joseph Cachia, Daniele Spadaro, Hector Scerri.
Here is a picture of the trophies to be awarded during the tournament.

Welcome Leste Aquila SC

We wish a warm welcome to our Singapore friends of Leste Aquila Subbuteo Club as they have expressed their interest to host WASPA tournaments int he near future. They will more than probably become the first asian club to host a WASPA event. Well done. For more details about this club, check thei website at http://www.wix.com/tablefootball/lasc

The news of the week (1)

Hello everyone, I decided to use the blog to publish news every thursday. When I was in charge in the FISTF Board, I published a newsletter every week. Right now I will change the way to work. News will be published ont he blog but people who want to receive the newsletter by e-mail can leave their e-mail address in the "Follow us by Email" section (in the right colomn of the blog). Feel free to tell your friends to join!

Tournament in Sweden - The big news this week come from Sweden. Lars Löfgren decided to organize a tournament on August 21 in Stockholm. You can contact Lars at bordshockeyexperten@hotmail.se and I'm sure those who travel to Stockholm will enjoy the trip. Marcus Tilgner from Germany will be there to play and there are good chances to see some players from Finland as well. Robert Green, an Australian living in Sweden, is likely to take part with an english friend.

More tournaments? - Right now only 2 tournaments have been held int he WASPA circuit and only 10 players are part of the ranking. Hopefully more events will be held soon as 2 clubs from England are interested to host tournaments and we have also had constructive contacts with Malta, Argentina, Ireland, Germany, Finland and South Africa. So hopefully more events will be added in the calendar in the near future.

News from Japan - Our friend Kenzou Koi from Japan wrote us to say the major newspaper Nikkei Shimbun made an interview of himself last week-end and there was some positive feedback. hopefully more players will join the "Subbuteo Japan" group and feel part of our community.

Top 10 nations this week on the blog - We have had more than 4200 visits ont he blog since it was launched. Over the last 7 days, the visitors came in priority from Italy (108), Greece (62), United Kingdom (52), the US (36), Finland (28), Germany (25), Belgium (23), Portugal (23), Singapore (20) and the Netherlands (14).

Handbook - The first WASPA Handbook was made a few weeks ago and since there, there were no improvements. I'm hoping to get more feedback and ideas to improve the Handbook as soon as possible.

Facebook - WASPA has now a page on Facebook. Feel free to join it to get the latest updates on the WASPA circuit.

Ideas - If you have new ideas for the future of WASPA, feel free to send them. WASPA is an associations of players so all suggestions are welcome.

Keep on flicking,
Vincent

Some statistics

The top 10 nations (number of visits on this blog since it was launched): Italy 929 ; United States 527 ; Greece 395 ; Belgium 362 ; United Kingdom 271 ; Portugal 250 ; Canada 192 ; Malta 169 ; Germany 111 ; Singapore 85.

More news about international subbuteo

There are many things going on for the moment in the international subbuteo scene. One of the main issues regarding the relations between FISTF and WASPA is that FISTF decided to have a Congress at the next World Cup on July 23 & 24 in Palermon (Italy). One of the points in the agenda is "WASPA and other associations". We hope the FISTF will keep their promises to let players play in both circuits. If it is the case, there might be some positive moves for WASPA as there could be a first WASPA tournament in Italy.

There are also good news from Argentina. The club of Buenos Aires contacted us to give their support. For the moment, there is no tournament yet in the agenda but Argentina and Brazil might become two of the next organizers of subbuteo tournaments under WASPA banner soon.

Who said WASPA sucks? We received a message from a player from Sweden who is thinking about organizing something in his country. In Scandinavia, the game of table hockey is very popular and some table hockey players might organize the first league in Sweden. "If there are players in Norway, Denmark and Finland, there is no reason to have no association in Sweden", reported Lars Löfgren.

We have also received support from clubs in the US and Canada. The small club of Trenton (Ontario) is hoping to host a tournament if they manage to get enough players together.

News: rankings & updates results file

Considering the recent poll on this blog gave as a result that rankings would be interesting for the WASPA players, the first rankings have been released in the WASPA Golden Book "that you can download from the "download section". Belgium's Renald Deloose is therefore the current world number 1 even if he's aware it doesn't mean much for the moment.

The Golden Book file is also updated with the results of the recent Templeuve tournament.

Poor turnout but great fun in Templeuve

Only six players took part in the tournament held in Templeuve on monday. Despite the low turnout, there were many great games. Dino & Eros Descamps didn't manage to qualify for the final and Dino won the game for the 5th place against his younger brother. Elodie Bertholet & Jean-Luc Platiaux came top of their groups in the first round but both players lost their semi-finals. Vincent Coppenolle beat Elodie Bertholet while Renald Deloose won against Jean-Luc Players. In the final, it was an easy win for Renald Deloose. He was already up (3-0) at half-time and won the game on a clear 7-3. Hopefully there will be more players taking part next time.

The players

The game for the 5th place

Renald Delose's Standard de Liège

The final

Some good news

We finally have some good news as it seems FISTF has finally understood WASPA is an association working for the good of the game, no against what FISTF is doing. Therefore Piero Capponi, president of FISTF, has announced there would be no sanction against players who take part to WASPA tournament. This is a positive and after all the mess of the last few days.

We now hope this decision will motivate more clubs to organize WASPA tournaments.