Ireland

[skatebreaker]

How many people know that we play roller hockey in ireland?

[DannyG]

Contrast...

a) my assumption is that the game, in some form or another, is played by somebody in every european country...

b) noted your concern about "proper rinks," or the lack thereof, in Ireland...please allow me to encourage you...next week, the Nations-Tobin Hockey league will have a team playing in each and every single age group of the USA Hockey inline youth nationals, including both Girls Divisions...and we have only played for the past eight years on a gymnasium sized rink.

When we return from the tournament on August 9th, we will very happily move into our brand new faciity...however, it took us a number of years to evolve into this level of rink, and we are happy with our progress to this point without it...please allow me to say, don't be discouraged by a lack of high-level facilities...dedication and work on the game make players, not the facility they play in...keep up the hard work.

<font color=purple>DannyG</font color=purple>

[skatebreaker]

Ya i think inline is really getting popular now. It really took off over the last couple of years.
We have a great standard of play for the age of the sport at the moment but our junior and pee wee base is very shallow. people just aren't committed and are much more interested in sports like soccer rugby and our irish sports gaelic football and hurling.

We have had a couple of opportunities to get better facilities but these turned out to be dead ends for one reason or another. we do however send teams to england to play on larger proper rinks and we don't do too badly. My team for instance finished in 7th place I think in a high standard league over there. And we also sent a team for warm up games against south africa in the world championships in germany this year.

[speedfreak2003]

i agree SB, we need a proper rink and more committed Irish players.