PIHA Forfeits

[HockeyFan1989]

Something has to be done, to lower and terminate the amount of forfeits in the league. Maybe some kind of fine for a team who forfeits? Idk it just makes things look really bad.

[-venom-]

One of the biggest problems our sport has always had....

It's pretty pathetic, if you ask me.

[showtime89]

While I agree, forfeiting at a "professional" level is completely unacceptable, I think it's a lot bigger than PIHA. While I knew what a forfeit was, I had never seen one until I started playing roller hockey. Never during years of Baseball, Soccer, or a variety of other team sports. People just don't take inline hockey seriously, even if they play it.

[HockeyFan1989]

I completely agree with you that it goes a lot further than PIHA. But if PIHA is the "Highest level of competitive play" for our sport, than they need to set an example to all other leagues.

[coach]

Marple again show they don't belong in PIHA.Again they don't stop short of showing any class leaving the Hartford Fire Ants and their fans without a team to play.Also leaving the Junior Fire Ants kids development program who were there for fan appreciation day with no game to watch.Shame on your organization for the endless display of not showing any professionalism to the Ants and PIHA.

[FireAnt34]

yea its pretty bad when you are supposed to have your last home game against Marple and the team is up here the night before playing the Blaze and just gets up and leaves to go home and doesn't tell anyone until we call them a hour before the game to find out if they are coming...pretty pathetic


Craig Lewis
Hartford Fireants #34

[mm609961]

three of our players were hurt in last nights games against the blaze, leaving us with four players total. after an hour, we made a decision to leave and promptly called kalish, since he was the only contact we had that late at night. to the blaze, thanks for the good games. i also hope the player that took the shot to the face is doing good.

[Lindro17]

What puzzles me is that everyone was told that Marple was coming u with 16 guys plus a goalie. Regardless of the excuse, this is a professional league. Every team has a responsibility. I see all of these posts about professionalism, and how roller hockey will never be professional. This is one of the reasons why. It was a shame because we as an organization advertised this event, had all of the junior teams in place. We even had the Blaze as an option to scrimmage once we heard earlier in the week that his might have been an issue, but was assured by ownership that this would not be the case.

Long story short, this was a disgrace. Events can happen, we all understand this, but to come up with only 7 guys to begin with is a joke to put it bluntly. It is not one individual's fault, don't take this personally, this reflects on the organization, both yours and ours, and the league. We told all of our fans that your bus broke down to attempt keeping the integrity of the league and not illustrate an organization NO SHOWING.

If this was going to be an issue, someone should have contacted ownership, coaches, someone other than our goalie, who was not even going to be there. This is why we have front offices, contact information, web sites, it should have been communicated to the Fireants that you only had 7 skaters, and that you were going to be running illegal lineups as it is, never mind having a chance that you were not showing up.

Unacceptable.

[FireAnt34]

first of all i hope those 3 players are ok... but why are you only traveling with 7 players to begin with when you know you have 8 games on one weekend?...there is a 32 man roster for reasons like that...yes we all know the playoff seedings but i know my team wanted to play our last home games with pride and tell our fans thank you for supporting us this season and close out the season with great games...there is no excuse for that



Craig Lewis
Hartford Fireants #34

[mm609961]

our whole minor team, with the exception of the two that showed, were in pittsburgh for nayrhl. the pro's that didn't show had their sr formal or sr presentations work to finalize. i'm not gonna fault them for putting their school work first. the rest of us pulled what we could together and at least show up, unfortunately we had those 3 injuries. the only contact i could get a hold of at that time to get into contact with you guys was jason, i figured he was better than no one. on behalf of the guys that showed though, i apologize.

[Lindro17]

Well the question is where do we go from here? I can't even thank the ones who came down because NOBODY came down. I guess I hold teams in this league on another level. I think teams will take these games seriously. We came down and visited you with a full squad- which you still have not posted the scoresheets from those games yet. One small thing that adds up, and puts an exclamation point by you not showing up. You did not have to apologize to the fans that showed up today expecting to see us play marple, play a game that has been advertised over the past few weeks as our fan appreciation day, introduction of junior players. I would be embarrassed playing on a team that no-showed, especially in this league.

like I said earlier, if your team was not going to be there, your ownership should have indicated this to ours. Instead, it was communicated to us by your owner that you had 16 CONFIRMED players PLUS a goalie as of Thursday/Friday of this past week. I am not blaming you, but the organization you play for. If you had told us this, we would have said stay home and set up games against the blaze and actually have games rather than find out that morning something that we suspected all week.

I hope your players that got injured are o.k.

[joisyan]

not trying to step in out of the blue here, but these are conversations that should take place between the coach/owners of the two respected teams. not by players posting all over the IHC like many have in the past. didnt we already go over the fact that all of the negativity in the public eye is a giving inline hockey (in general) a black eye?

[Superstar9]

There's quite a few things that can be a problem when it comes to commitment all the way from the top of the league all the way down to the single player. Trust me I know. We just had a HELL weekend but made it work out because at all costs, I didn't want to become one of the teams people complain about. Get this for a story....

The league was unable to supply us with refs because of multiple events going on in our area. I spent friday night coming up with a list of all possible people to call because it was too late to call them so I'd have to wait until Saturday morning, adding to that any of the normal stuff that has to be done for home games I never even went to bed. I then spent early saturday calling every rink (ice and inline), organization, and ref I knew until I went through about 30+ refs in the area and still had no one just hours before the game. In the midst of all this I find out that our biggest sponsor isn't going to to an after party because we had a forfeit on our last home date, they always paid us $500 each home date to bring everyone to their restaurant after the games. This left us without our usual funding for rink time and STILL we had no refs. Needless to say it was looking pretty bad and there was NOTHING that was myself or MY team's fault in this. In the end we had to pull some strings and make due with guys we could get to ref. They weren't the best by any means but we understood that and the Robins did as well. Either way, we still made the games happen and moved on. It was the worst day of my life having to deal with all of that plus never going to bed and having to play BUT, it goes to show that it is doable. Forfeits should not happen.

While I say all that, I do not think that fines for the teams would be the answer. Usually if a team is struggling, fining them is probably not going to make it any better and they probably don't have the money or wont pay it anyway. There's got to be a better idea to handle problems for startup teams. Either we have to look into the team's abilities more BEFORE the season or their needs to be a program developed by the league to give more support to expansion teams during their first season. No one gains anything by forfeits, fines, or by ejecting teams from the league. Anyone have any ideas on how to either help new teams OR keep them from joining the league until they're ready both financially and commitment wise?

ps- I played like crap, worst games of the season for me!

[ARHA]

Did the Stingers ever play the Knights on March 29th? The game was scheduled as a home game at the same time as an away game vs. the Robins. The away game was played but I was just wondering if the other game was ever played.

[Swampdonkey17]

I hope Marple has a plan to reimburse the Fire Ants organization for money they lost due to ticket prices, concession stand, lighting, refs, and pro shop profits. That's a joke, but if you've read other posts about Marple, this is nor surprise.....at all.