2008 FIRS world Senior Championships

[cirilh]

Dusseldorf Germany - 2 arenas 2 world championships.

Men at Ratigen that begin on July 6 08:00 am local time
First game MEXICO vs NETHERLANDS and Mexico win 3 - 1

Women will begin at 12:30 local time

[RichardGraham]

Hi cirilh,

Thank you for the update. Please keep them coming.

[Rzorbck]

Anyone have a link where we can get scores for this?

[Stampede#11]

The FIRS website. Just google "FIRS Inline Hockey".

[RichardGraham]

Hi Dave,

You can also try:

http://www.rollersports.org/datas.as...08&show=T00164

It would be nice if FIRS, after all these years, would send an occasional press release to Inline Hockey Central.

After all, America IS the birthplace of INLINE hockey.

[Jon Mosenson]

They also have the highlights from our frist game against France which we won 6-5 at the bottom of the page that Richard has posted.

By the way, nice meeting you at AAU Richard.

[RichardGraham]

Hey Jon,

It was nice to meet you, too. Congrats on your win against France. Can you or one of your teammates post some of your thoughts on the tournament here? The FIRS website has scores, but not much else. Thanks!

[nummer55]

Richard,

"cirilh" is the FIRS (Comite International de Roller Inline Hockey). Problem is, most of them are French and have a hard time writing English.

[nummer55]

Richard,

"cirilh" is the FIRS (Comite International de Roller Inline Hockey). Problem is, most of them are French and have a hard time writing English. The most up-to-date website seems to be:

http://www.inline-hockey-wm.com/en/

Sheets are here:

http://www.rollersports.org/datas.as...08&show=T00164

Pictures from a Dutch photographer:

http://www.raymondtellers.nl/icehockey/

French info:

http://www.rollerhockeyfrance.com

[RichardGraham]

Hi nummer55,

Thanks for your post. It is extremely helpful.

I have been out of the loop with FIRS for some time -- it is just so difficult to get detailed and timely information from that group.

Please explain the difference (if there is one) between the CIRILH and FIRS. Is it simply the French name for FIRS? If so, isn't there anyone at FIRS that writes and speaks English?

(I don't speak a second language, so I can't complain too much, but if you are an international sports federation, I think it is imperative that you have people who speak the language of the participants at your events.)

Thanks again for your post. I appreciate it very much.

[nummer55]

CIRILH is the Inline Hockey Committee of the FIRS (since they have multiple sports). George Pickard (US resident) was their president, but now it is Gilbert Portier (French).

I totally agree with you about the lack of communication and media. Gilbert for instance writes in French and then has his texts translated by someone else. He used to be the president of the European committee and is extremely active, so you might be hearing more and more of them.

FIRS is probably our best shot of becoming Olympic so hopefully they'll manage to become more visible. I have been playing for team the Netherlands in the past days and the tournament is well organized (our first team competing). Results could be better

[RichardGraham]

Hi nummer55,

Thanks again for the information; it is very helpful. I had not seen the acronym CIRILH before, so I was confused.

Tell Gilbert that I can take something that's written in broken English and fix it up nicely.

Good luck with your team the rest of the way. I'm sure it's a big challenge, but smaller nations have done very well in inline hockey lately.

[growl89]

team usa vs team france in the finals...

[InlineMBA]

WOW, France beat the Czech's 2 times, once in pool play and then in the Semi's. So much for the "Inge Theory".

3 Teams from pool A made it to the Semi-Finals.

Good luck to team USA.

Steve Inge

[quick_dry]

I have been playing for team the Netherlands in the past days and the tournament is well organized (our first team competing). Results could be better

I think they really dropped the ball with the communication and travel scheduling. (This is based on staying in Dusseldorf, the teams staying at Rattingen were closer to the main rink, so it was less of an issue AFAIK - my parents stayed at the Relaxa and a guesstimate put it at a bit over a mile from the rink, versus 20-30 minutes via car from dusseldorf)

Bus schedules were either not given, innaccurate, or the changes were announced at times like 1:30am or so...

(On the plus side it made for a good social mixer, with teams splitting taxis so they could get to watch games because there weren't buses... hijacking buses and just piling in till the driver couldn't say no. It seemed like they'd barely assigned enough buses to cope with the actual teams playing, let alone enough for if teams wanted to watch other games)

They didn't have a tournament director (or someone who could act in that capacity) there from start to finish. We played 3 periods of overtime, and were just about to go into the 4th, when the President (IIRC) came down and announced that was the end of the game and no OT should have been played. That turned out to be the correct call, but those situations shouldn't arise.

The presentations for Div 2 werent communicated to the teams, and as a result several countries were embarassed by not having any representatives there. The teams that were there, only found out because they played (and that was directly from them). Comment was made from an official that my team just hadn't turned up because we were hungover - that was untrue and insulting - every single team member would have been there if we'd been told.

Refs - I'm sure they tried hard - there weren't many and they each did lots of games, but in the games played AND the games watched, they just seemd way out of their depth. Stats are 'interesting' - if they even remembered to give an assist, the numbers seemed to be assigned randomly - there are games where points are assigned to numbers not even on the scoresheet. (Also, the online sheets don't all match up with the actual paper scoresheet - despite both being done rinkside as the game happened).

All that said, it was a very enjoyable tournament, can't wait for next year. Hopefully they'll iron out the communication and scheduling problems.

(Good to see more and more teams actually sing their national anthem, rather than just stand and kill time while it plays)

(edit: mention also has to go to Korea for brightest jersey ever, fluoro pink, green and yellow... oh yeah, it was 'out there' )