E.P.L.

Return of the Hoff - Subbuteo legend to return?

English success in Belgium

ESTFA 2007/8 Membership details

Internal Problems in Greece before the Europa Cup

Article from http://le-premiere.blogspot.com/ Friday 5th October 2007

With just 3 weeks to start a new edition of the FISTF Europa Cup for Clubs, a burning flame has burst inside Greece, with big differences among the main club members. The FISTF Community have received an email from Kostas Mavraganis explaining his point of view about the important problem, which could be negative for the atmosphere during the Europa Cup in Athens. Here we have the most important part of his letter: "The Hellenic Association has no official statute so problems were appearing all the time. The result of the last elections (December 2006) was a tie and the current board is constituted by two person from each "side". This is quite a problem because we can't agree in many important things.

This summer, after a discussion with the representatives of most of the Greek clubs, we brought for voting our proposal for the creation of legal statute and new elections. Again the other two members denied. Then, without any serious excuse, Mr Coppenolle interfere in the matter, NOT ALLOWING us to proceed with the above LEGAL actions, taking obvious side with the other two members of the board, who represent the minority (3 out of 12 clubs – Falcons, Roligans and Athens Kickers), because in this minority are the good Greek players and some of the closest friends and collaborators (Mr Triantafillou, Mr Aggelinas etc).
These certain people made a decision to divide the Hellenic association, with the tolerance of FISTF, they already have postponed the I.O. scheduled for the 29th-30th of this month and with their actions they jeopardize the organisation of the coming Europa Cup.

Almost everyone here in Greece want FISTF to stop interfering in our matters and make decisions for us. They have already tried once by appointing Mr Busing and Mr Koutsobinas as negotiators, and even thought the other two members of the board intentionally and ostentatiously ignore their proposal for a meeting, FISTF still supports them and ignores the half of the board and the vast majority of the Greek players."

Should FISTF finally put all the things in the correct place within of Greek Table Football? do you think that is good for our sport to find a "strange atmosphere" during the Europa Cup in Athens? For the forthcoming future of our sport, we hope to see solved all existing differences among the parts in the greek federation.

Verhagen is English

San Siro Worthing Five Star player Eric Verhagen was today confirmed as having changed his nationality from Dutch to English.

FISTF President Vincent Coppenolle wrote:

"Eric Verhagen has officially received the approval to play for ENGLAND this season for both the English board and the FISTF Sport department after he proved to both parties that he lives in England now."

New ESTFA Board announced

The Association held its AGM at Leicester Forest on Saturday 18th August. A good afternoon of discussion and debate took place, leading to the election of the following board:

Chairman - Martin Hodds

Secretary - Simon Bryan

Treasurer - Richard Pepper

England Captain & Player Development - David Pawsey

Algy Taylor is no longer a board member, but the Association will be using Algy's considerable IT skills to focus on maintaining this website.

New ESTFA Chairman - and former Fixture Secretary - Martin Hodds made the following statement:

"Thanks to everyone for their good wishes to both me personally and to the board as a whole.

I would also like to say a public thank you to outgoing board members Algy Taylor (as mentioned above), Les Commons, Mike Parnaby and Shaun Allison for your work and input to the ESTFA. Also to outgoing England captain Phil Redman (whose tenure ends after the World Cup in France on 1st & 2nd September).

Our main aim for the 2007/8 season is to get the basics right. Once we are confident that the new structure works, and more importantly you are all confident in our ability to run the game in England, then we can look forward to build the game to become even better.

I don't doubt there will be a mistake or two somewhere along the way, but they will be honest ones and I would ask for your patience to help us deal with things in a more professional way.

Let's try and work together to make the ESTFA an association to be proud of !"

Martin Hodds
ESTFA Chairman