Dear Mrs President; It was great pleasure that I read your IIHF interview posted on Facebook. And I welcome the openness of using social medias, giving us, the humble members of your federation the opportunity to share our opinions with you as well. This is the way a federation should work: Full transparency and open dialog. I take my hat to you for posting this on Facebook to open the dialog. Being passionate about ice hockey Id really love to see this sport go forward and receive the attention and the financing it deserve. And yes.. we are also so glad about the ice rink of Liège. What a great step forward. But I am jealous and very sad that the capital of Europe, Brussels, with all its government bodies and international institutions and its thousand of expatriates has no proper ice rink and no Ice hockey. How come there is no Ice hockey in brussels? Is there something we should do ? Should we lobby to make this happen ? What is RBIHF doing about this ? I believe it is federations who should try to put things in motion. You mentioned that you stopped broadcasting the cup final on TV. What has it been replaced it by? To attract new players, to make a sport popular, it is crucial that the general public hears about the sport and that an emotional bound is made with the viewers. This is why being on TV or at least on internet is so important. I believe your site should have a big RBIHF TV page and at least one Elite game per week should be streamed live (as a TV program with multi-cam, graphics, commentator etc...) and available on demand during the week. Once this is going well and we can prove that their is a public for ice hockey in Belgium, it will become easier to get a nationwide weekly TV broadcast attracting main stream viewer and sponsors to Ice hockey. I have been involved with putting Basket ball on TV with Belgacom. It was a slow moving-low budget sport. However, in a short time, things have really improved. The number of spectators in the sport halls during the matches has risen 17% in the first 6 month and by now, 2 years later, the sports hall are often full and the public keeps growing. The teams around the country are getting new members. Sponsors are all over basketball right now. We can do something similar with ice hockey. All this does not need to cost a lot of money at all. In the past I have even tried to contact you to offer some free streaming of matches to let the momentum start. Sadly, I was never given a proper answer. That is so sad. Regarding the national teams, it is a fact that things are looking good and that your team has provided excellent work and fantastic results in the past. I just hope that the recent change in the staff for national teams will not slow down the fantastic momentum that was in motion. I cant help but wonder: Why change a winning team ? Especially while mentioning in your article what a great result the previous team has booked... Not very logical if you ask me. For your information, I went with the U18 IIHF Tournament last march in Serbia (At my personal cost... dont worry)... and had a great time. I discovered first hand what a great place Belgium is getting on the International Ice hockey scene. I also streamed a MONO camera stream so that parents in Belgium could also enjoy their kids exploits. For your information... with no preparation and no promotion, an amateur single camera stream ended up attracting about 10000 viewers in a week...from around the world... With 2500 unique visitors from Belgium. The only promotion was social media and community management. This is very encouraging. Unfortunately no follow-up was possible since. This is typically something that should have been promoted and broacasted on your site. I had such a great time that I also produced a little 3 part documentary about the U18 tournament experience.. In the last week (4 to 11th November), we had a total of about 1000 views and 3000 prints. I was expecting you guys to jump on the opportunity and place the 3 videos (I offered to provide the links for free) on your site.. but NO... nothing happened. You are missing a great opportunity. It is important to give fun content to the public on your site. I see many other individual initiative that should all be centralised on the RBIF web site.. I salute what your team has done with the E-sheet and the website. Very nice. However the rest of the website could be far better with a real editorial content. Right now... people go to see game results and you use it to make a few general announcements. This means that the site has not enough interesting content and will not be visited daily. Which should be your goal. So on top of the RBIHF TV I mentioned above, a photo section is very well overdue and a blog of the national team trainers and team managers would be a great beginning. (The minimum should be to place pictures of the national teams that are relevant and not 2-3 years old.. It is a lack of respect for the players who have put in the effort and time to be present and not recognised by the federation they actually served. About youth training, you mention other countries having far more ice time by sacrificing school time and education quality. This is not necessary the case. I have interviewed the president of the Sweedish federation, of the Serbian federation and of the swiss federation. They all have great plans for youth training always making sure the kids also excel academically. The systems of most sport schools with ice hockey have very strict rules about school results: No good results means no ice time. At the age of 15, my son decided to go to France to be able to play ice hockey more seriously that what is possible in Belgium. They have 9 hours of training weekly: They have 3 trainings per week at 7:00 AM and 3 trainings per week at 19h30 with the normal club. The morning classes missed are given by a teacher appointed by the hockey club on the same day. So of course it is hard and very long days... but is is a great education both of the ice and off the ice. I can tell you...I miss my son ver much... but when I see how much he has improved on the ice, and how his school grades are better than when he was here.. and also how he has learned to manage his own live, i believe in his case, this was the right choice. I am very sure that a similar approach is possible in Belgium if somebody really tried to put it in motion. I invite the federation to look into this. I am sure it would be a way to both bring the level of our sport higher, but it will also keep young players passionate about ice hockey for much longer. (Many kids quit ice hockey at around 16-17 years old) I love the way you remind us of the great Ice hockey legacy we have in the Royal Belgian Ice Hockey Federation over the pat 100 years... yes... BELGIAN. As a French speaker member of the RBIHF, I cant help but notice that the B is for Belgium and that I believe a communication campaign towards the promotion of Ice Hockey in the south of the country is more than necessary. I also wonder who is representing the interests of French speaking members in the RBIHF especially, as to my knowledge, I beliveve none of your board members actually are interested in developing ice hockey in Brussels and Wallonia. I heard rumours about a new ice rink in Jambes opening in the future.. that could be a great place to start. Finally, I would like to know how I could, as a member of the RBIHF be aware of the decision making process and of important voting sessions. I am convinced that many others would like to express their opinion and have access to minutes of meeting. I believe this information is public to the members and the fact that nobody is aware of the process to participate actively to the management of the federation of our sport is a bit worrying. RBIHF is a democracy.. no ? It is time to stop playing political games but concentrate on making ice hockey grow. Just to be clear. I am not complaining without offering solutions. Like many other Belgian ice hockey fanatics, I am ready to jump in and actively do my part to help Ice hockey move forward in our country. But it seems that until today, the RBIHF remains a closed club where new positive energy is not very welcome. I think and hope that this is just an impression from outside and that a real development plan can be put in place in many new areas. The future needs to be bright. So again.. I am very happy about your article and about your recent openness on Facebook. It is after all the first time in 5-6 years that I have come across a public RBIHF announcement that expresses a plan and a position for the future. I hope this will be the beginning of a great new dialog and of great expansion time of ice hockey in Belgium the months and years to come.
Posted on: Tue, 12 Nov 2013 06:53:38 +0000