The Board agreed that the working group will do the visibility study, led by Walter.

The Board has agreed to follow the proposition of the CCO regarding the team manager.

Competitions Committee Indoor Report

EuroHockey Indoor Championships 2018

EuroHockey Indoor Championship, Men – Antwerp (BEL) – 8 teams

EuroHockey Indoor Championship II, Men – Alanya (TUR) – 8 teams

EuroHockey Indoor Championship III, Men – Nicosia (CYP) – 7 teams

EuroHockey Indoor Championship, Women – Prague (CZE) – 8 teams

EuroHockey Indoor Championship II, Women – Brussels (BEL) – 8 teams

EuroHockey Indoor Championship III, Women – Apače (SLO) – 3 teams

We had 6 tournaments, with 23 men and 19 women; a total of 42 teams (22M/16W; 38 teams in 5 events in 2016).

The European Champions are:

Indoor Championship (Men): Austria

Indoor Championship (Women): Germany

Cyprus organized its first international tournament.

Withdrawal update

GEO (M) withdrew too late from the event in Nicosia.

RUS (W) was strongly thinking of withdrawing, but when they heard the (financial) consequences via the Disciplinary Commissioner, they stayed in.

The Competitions Manager visited Nicosia, Antwerp and Brussels. The events were superbly hosted. It is worth mentioning that CYP hosted an international event for the first time ever and did a marvellous job. They are very positive towards hosting again in 2020.

EuroHockey Indoor Club Championships 2018

EuroHockey Indoor Club Cup, Men – Wettingen (SUI) – 8 teams

EuroHockey Indoor Club Trophy, Men – Minsk (BLR) – 8 teams

EuroHockey Indoor Club Challenge I, Men – Prague (CZE) – 8 teams

EuroHockey Indoor Club Challenge II, Men – Tbilisi (GEO) – 7 teams

EuroHockey Indoor Club Cup, Women – Dundee (SCO) – 8 teams

EuroHockey Indoor Club Trophy, Women – Prague (CZE) – 8 teams

EuroHockey Indoor Club Challenge I, Women – Murska Sobota (SLO) – 8 teams

We had 7 tournaments with 31 men and 24 women in 55 clubs (50 teams (31M/19W) in 2016 and 51 teams (29M/22W) in 2017).

The EuroHockey Club Champions are:

EuroHockey Indoor Club Cup (Men): KTHC Rot-Weiss Koln (GER)

EuroHockey Indoor Club Cup (Women): UHC Hamburg (GER)

During the women’s Club Cup in Dundee an incident occurred during the Club de Campo-Arminen match where the match officials made an unfortunate mistake. The AUT club lost the match, missed out on the semis and got relegated in the end. They sent EHF a complaint letter and EHF has replied to this letter.

Withdrawal update

SRB (M) withdrew in time from the event in Tbilisi.

ARM (M) was strongly thinking of withdrawing, but when they heard the (financial) consequences via the Disciplinary Commissioner, they stayed in.

The Competitions Manager visited Tbilisi. As this was the first time they hosted, this was a very positive experience. They are very interested in offering to host more events in the future.

EuroHockey Indoor Championships 2020 & EuroHockey Indoor Club Championships 2019

Entries and Applications to host for these events have been sent out and deadlines are 15 April 2018. In the next EB the CCI will present the decisions on club indoor events and recommendations for indoor Championships.

Update EuroHockey Indoor Junior Championships 2019

Indoor Junior Championship (M)

Venue: Vienna (AUT)

Pool A: AUT, SUI, CRO, BLR       Pool B: POL, RUS, ITA, TUR

Indoor Junior Championship II (M)

Venue: Paredes (POR)

One Pool: CZE, SWE, DEN, UKR, POR, SVK, WAL

Ø  It was initially scheduled to be played in Espinho, but due to elections in that city the support of the city government of the venue wasn’t existing anymore. The new venue is about the same distance from Porto airport, so this change was approved.

Indoor Junior Championship (W)

Venue: Tarnowskie Gory (POL)

Pool A: BLR, POL, SUI, ITA        Pool B: UKR, CZE, AUT, RUS

Indoor Junior Championship II (W)

Venue: Sveti Ivan Zelina (CRO)

One Pool: CRO, WAL, SWE, TUR, SVK

Ø  SVK recently entered as 5^th team. The host is trying to convince neighbour countries like SLO, SRB and HUN to enter also to have more teams in the event.

FIH released the new Indoor World Rankings so the pools could be decided.

Update Indoor Hockey World Cup 2018 in Berlin

The Competitions Manager and Chair visited the venue and an informal meeting was scheduled with the new CCI members. Due to various reasons only 1 out of the 4 was able to attend this short informal meeting.

It was great to see 4 European women’s teams in the semi-finals with GER as winner of the event.

Priorities for Committee for the next period (please specify period):

1. Ongoing support and advice to host venues and participating teams and nations for Indoor tournaments 2019.
2. Deal with any queries from participating nations and clubs accordingly.
3. Preparations for the annual CCI meeting May 5, 2018 in Amsterdam (NED).

Euro Hockey League

The ticketing is going well, there has been lot of work done pushing ticketing and sponsoring.

The venue for the Final 4 will be decided after the KO16. In the last two years it was in Barcelona then at Dragons. This year, it will most probably go to Bloemendaal or Dragons provided one of them make the Final 4. The provisional agreement has been finalised with Bloemendaal and is almost done with Dragons.

The Final 4 has been set as the last weekend  in May to avoid moving around each year.

Next year, assuming the HPL schedule is as it is, we will need to combine the KO16 and Final 4.  The EHL Board will then asses the long-term approach to the competition in light of the new FIH competition schedule.

Regarding points awarded after a goal, we will be evaluating the system after the EHL season. We need to evaluate the figures but also perhaps ask the teams their feeling about this rule.

Development Projects Report

Club of the Year:

New Poster was designed and included social media links too.

13 Nominations

·       9 Small Club under 300 members

·       4 large club over 300 members

Development Committee Voted German Club ETB SW Essen as small club of the Year 2017.

Development Committee Voted Spanish Club Atletic Terrassa large club of the Year 2017.

The presentation of 500 Euro award at date and event to be determined.

From now on Club of the Year will go out 1^st October of each Year.

Youth Leaders:

Youth Leadership Group of 11 members met at the World Cup Indoors in Berlin.

Clarification reached on its purpose – ‘Give Youth a real voice in European hockey development’.

Cluster leads from the leadership group with another 30 young voices (16-30 age range) across Europe. Aim is to grow this to 40 young people for the Youth Festival in 2019.

Leaders will come to EHF Para Hockey & Youth Festival meetings with Belgium Hockey.

Youth Caravan:

Working again with the Youth Caravan around central Europe for summer coaching festivals for young people. Invitations have been sent out to the central cluster and now the Nordic region. We will have confirmations by April 2018.

National Associations:

·       Successful meetings in Sweden end of 2017 and the South East Forum. Met with Belgium Hockey, KNHB early 2018.

·       Meeting held on 22/02 with England, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, Spain about dual support between them and EHF moving forward. Successful discussions begun on a range of areas from Education to Development to support increasing the success of all the programmes. More detail to follow. Next meeting to be held in August in London.

·       Discussions begun with Ukraine about their new set up and development opportunities and looking at a visit late summer 2018.

·       Discussions with Greece around development opportunities. There are pockets of high interest. 2018 trip planned to discuss potential of a future twinning project.

Funding:

Tom Pedersen-Smith & Grainne Cory attended the EU Erasmus+ funding conference to find out about different a range of opportunities.

One bid is being directly submitted by the EHF to the small collaborative fund. This is:

·        Twinning through Governance: EHF, Netherlands & Ukraine & Czech Republic

One bid is being supported by the EHF to the small collaborative fund submitted directly by the Czech Republic Federation.

·       Twinning through Coach Development: EHF, Netherlands & Czech Republic

Both will be submitted by April 5^th, 2018

Future bid considerations include:

·       Twinning through Education: Nordic, Central Regions

·       Give & Get Pitches: South East, Balkan, East

·       Governance and Gender Balance: Europe

Give & Get:

KIT:

·       Equipment donated from Belgium Hockey – EHF moved x24 boxes of kit to Czech Republic, Prague which was handed out to teams at the Indoor tournament Feb 2018. Teams from SLO, HUN, SVK, POR, WAL, UKR benefited.

·       Equipment Donated from KNHB was moved by EHF to Bulgaria, Sofia and our SE Rep has been shared across a number of different countries from the end of 2017 through to beginning of 2018. Including SER, BUL, ARM, BLR, ROM.

PITCHES:

·       Continue to have more constructive talks with Polytan about providing information to EHF first about the lifting of pitches.

·       NEW EHF Give and Get Pitches information is to be released in Spring 2018. Providing all nations and suppliers details about the programme. This will include a call to action for those wanting pitches to contact EHF to provide details against the needed criteria to receive one, this way we will continue to have a working list.

·       Organised a meeting with FIH (Jan 2018) and a number of pitch specialists and contractors who ship goods, to talk about the EHF Give and Get programme. Looking at a joint approach with FIH world-wide as well. EHF are happy to support this, but we will continue with own programme while FIH make their decisions.

·       Development involved in the new facilities committee and see this as a very good option moving forward to progress the give & get programme.

ParaHockey:

Very successful meeting in December 2017 with 13 Nations around the next two years of Para Hockey. Each nation has progressed again since the last year.

The main focus now has started around the work with Special Olympics (SO). There is an SO in each Nation. Working with the SO in Netherlands with a festival in June. Aim is to get each Para Nation and SO to work together over the next couple of years. SO is very much about growth/participation and providing an exceptional festival/events. SO, also keen to support and work with EHF on classification programmes and criteria.

Other participation Festivals over the next year include Barcelona June 2018 and Milan in  2019.

INAS and FIH are hosting the Paris INAS European Games. FIH and EHF link closely on providing Nations for this likely to be from the more elite Nations for Para Hockey.

Discussions were held around the ‘communications/terms’ used for Para Hockey. It was clarified that Para Hockey could be any type of hockey and that any nation can and should use their own terms that are understood in their nation. What was also stated is that FIH has made decision to focus on Players with Intellectual disability (I.D. So EHF will concentrate on I.D. hockey but accepted they should at least promote other types of Para Hockey.

The EHF’s number one aim to increase more people and more nations playing Para Hockey.

Women & Girls:

Overview of the main aims for EHF to provide an equal and equitable strategy for hockey nations. The presentation is being reviewed and has had some feedback from a number of nations and the Youth Panel. The development committee are now assessing this feedback.

MarComms:

Working with Marketing & Communications to provide a range of new content for 2018 and updating the website with the latest information.

Use of European Hockey Federation Shield across all Dev & Ed work.

Priorities for Committee for the next period:

Funding Outcomes (By December 2018)

Developed Nations Support (By Summer 2018)

European Para Hockey Championship Plans (By Summer 2018)

European Youth Festival Plans (By Summer 2018)

Give & Get Relaunch (By Spring 2018)

The new committee had its first meeting at the beginning of the year. Peter Elders, the chair, was happily surprised. He is pleased to see lots of women in the group.

The development and education committees will probably have a joint meeting, probably the same weekend than Executive Board meeting.

Education Committee – Umpires

UDP

Rob ten Cate has agreed to be the new UDP Lead. The mentors for Group 12 are confirmed as Hamish Jamson (ENG) and Louise Knipe. Arrangements for the Launch weekend are in progress.

The working group will work earlier in the process to have the mentors sorted out for the next groups of UDP.

Following input from the meetings in January and March, it has been agreed that the focus for each group should be in a 2:1 ratio of practical versus observational.

We also clarified that UDP was about excellence and that we should seek the best young umpires in Europe as candidates, subject to an aspiration to gender balance and encouraging less-developed nations.

Finally, we seek closer co-operation with the Appointments Committee to ensure that UDP umpires get the right number of appropriate opportunities to enable progression.

In the meantime, UDP activities have continued as usual, with the highlight being a practical weekend in Brussels for Group 11. Future potential mentors are to be approached “early” so that they can be announced alongside Group 13 umpire selection.

U4E

The application process for U4E 2018 has just commenced, with a closing date at the end of March. We are hopeful that we will again get many applicants! The Breda Practical weekend will be 24^th-26^th August.

Tomas Holek has agreed to work with Rob ten Cate on the Webinar programme.

SNG

Following the retirement of Thomas Eilmer from the Committee, and Rob ten Cate’s agreement to take over as UDP Lead, Stefano Bresciano (ITA) will take the lead for SNG, supported by new Committee member, Tomas Holek (CZE).

It was decided to run a second Level One Umpire Coaching Course at the Breda weekend, given the positive feedback from last year. Applications are being invited from NAs imminently.

We will also be “marketing” the new development partnership opportunity for NAs.  In essence, this seeks to move away from one-off seminars and events, and to partner tailor-made longer-term initiatives to provide lasting benefit. We strongly believe that this will allow sustainable programmes to be built and evaluated.

Priorities for Committee for the next period:

UDP – Confirm Launch weekend arrangements. Continue “normal” group activity with Groups 10 & 11.

U4E – Process U4E applications and make selections.

Finalise all arrangements for Breda Weekend

Invite U4E mentors 2018

SNG – process L1 Umpire Coaching Course applications

Finalise arrangements for course in Breda

All 3 groups were missing a few people due to the weather, they did some skype meetings for planning.

Education Committee – Officials

Activities in 2018 of EHF Education Committee (working group officials)

The working group officials met for the first time in its new formation during the Education Committee meeting on the 3^rd of March 2018.

The working group will endeavor to continue the good work set out by the previous members of the working group. We will seek alignment with the EHF appointments committee to accommodate specific needs to educate officials. Furthermore, the relationship with the FIH academy will be intensified.

There is a concern within the working group regarding high number of judges that are educated in Breda each year and the fact that these judges cannot be appointed due to the limited amount of appointment slots.

Actions:

·       Contact the EHF appointment committee to align on nomination process by NA’s.

·       We will develop a course to educate national officials (regionally) so NA’s don’t need to nominate national judges for them to be educated. This will be part of the offer through SNG (Supporting National Growth) but this will need to be costed up correctly.

The working group has identified the need to review and update the training material of all the current training courses. Furthermore, we see the need to make the seminars (TO and TD) more interactive.

Actions:

·       Gather all current training material and review/update

·       Contact the EHF appointment committee to obtain their view on the new way of appointing by FIH and if EHF will take up this same method.

·       Contact FIH academy to seek alignment

·       Draw up a business case to have the seminars at tournament locations.

The working group will start to develop a webinar for first time appointed judges and local appointed judges. “I’m appointed to a tournament what now…”

This webinar will be available one month prior to a tournament.

The working group will continue planning the following activities :

2018 TO level                      – Location TBD (planning October 2018)
Judges level                – Breda, NED  (planning 25/26 August 2018)

2019 Top TD level                – EuroHockey Championships in BEL
Judges level                 – Breda, NED
TD  Intermediate level  – Location TBD
UM seminar                 – Location TBD

With regards to the UM seminar, within the Committee, it was expressed that no overspending of the budget should be allowed, unless properly discussed and approved well beforehand.

The project to develop a new TO feedback form has been put on hold as the FIH is currently working on incorporating the TO feedback form into TMS. Knowledge from the pilot phase has been with FIH and will be re-used in the new form.

Priorities for Committee for the next period (2018):

–       Review and update training material

–       Look into business case for seminars on tournament location

–       Develop regional judge training program

Develop webinar for first time appointed judges

Education Committee – Coaches

C4E 2018

16 People, 14 First Year, 2 Second Year from 11 Nations with 3 Females and 4 Mentors.  Belgium will host Seminar 1 – April and The Netherlands Seminar 2 – August.

New Module details have been created and all mentors have run this through.

§  This includes differences for 2^nd year coaches.

§  Agreement on two-year module basis.

§  Meeting at this Seminar 1 will conclude use of Sportsways for 4^th Seminar in Summer of each 2^nd year. Likely to be agreed due to success in Amsterdam.

The C4E course is the equivalent of the Level 1 course of FIH.

It was noted that it is difficult to have female coaches and we have probably reached our maximum capacity of people attending the course because we don’t have more resources to give the courses.

TCP 2018

21 People, 16 First Year, 5 Second Year from 11 Nations with 3 Females and 4 Mentors (1 female). Germany hosted Seminar 1 – February, successfully working with FIH at Indoor World Cup. New mentor with Ageeth Boomgaardt involved and live analysis of games was good. It was noted that we need to be aware if working in conjunction with other organisations that the level of coaching abilities can differ. The pilot of TCP booklets was introduced for each candidate for notes. The Netherlands will host Seminar 2 in June.

TCP and C4E Modules are confirmed for the whole of 2018. Actions below coming from the recent meeting.

Use of booklets and mentors/coach packs to be assessed through 2018 on TCP and decision made in October meeting to roll this out across both programmes in 2019.

TCP, is  the same course than FIH does and is equivalent to FIH Level 3.

Priorities for Committee for the next period (please specify period):

Tracking of Coaches who enter our programmes and what level they are at when they start to the end.

Utilise contacts in other sports to add depth to programmes – sport science, elite performance, scouting etc.

Coaching time to be expanded on all TCP seminars moving forward.

EHF to hold a database of video match footage for coach analysis purposes.

Mentors pathway with EHF and FIH to be established.

Price points for courses need looking into as C4E has been same price when there was only one seminar now there is two seminars price to be increased for October nominations.

Hon Treasurer’s Report

Mika Rithila

The outlook for 2017 represents the estimated budget for 2017 but is down significantly from our forecast in December due to higher than forecast expenses.  The President requested that the areas of increased expenditure were reviewed thoroughly.

Compared to 2016, we received a larger grant from the KNHB and the FIH in 2017 for development and education. Regarding the expenses, the communications expenses exceeded the budget for 2017, and the office expenses as well. This is largely due to the change in staff and organization and the large number of events we held in 2017. Staffing costs will now stabilize. The cash balance is lower than what was budgeted due to the EHL fee that was billed later than expected.

Year to date 2018

The 2018 budget was approved at the GA in August 2017. We can foresee a significant deficit at the end of 2018. We have planned some costs savings in expenditure and Mika and Angus will refine further. It is mainly due to the fact that we will have less tournaments in 2018 than we had in 2017 and that the TV rights income falls in the odd years and is not spread across two years.

Mika Rihtila will present the new financial system at the next Executive Board meeting.

FIH Report

The FIH Board agreed on a world ranking system based on a 4-year cycle with ranking points for the Pro League and the World Hockey Series Open. This new world ranking system will come into effect with the Pro League. This new system will be presented in more details during the next Executive Board meeting.

Regarding possible illnesses of players during a tournament, the new Olympic system will allow to have 2 P players instead of 1 stand in player. This will have potential cost implication and could impact team morale.

The FIH proposed to play matches for the last team in each of the pools at the World Cups, which was not planned initially. This will only go ahead if both hosts agree. (The extra matches have been rejected.)

YOG: it was originally planned to have the next edition in 2023 however they may now organise it in 2022. There is a possibility to go to Africa, but the presence of hockey is to be discussed and the format as well. When this will be decided, we will then look at our U16 competitions.

Governance

The new FIH CEO, Thierry Weil will start on the 4^th April.

Rules

The committee had its last meeting in October last year and will have its next meeting in Lausanne in September. There won’t probably be many changes by 2019. What we can foresee is that someday we will have 4 quarters in the rules. We need to be consistent and have a rule for everyone, from the youngest to the Olympic final.

PyeongChang Winter Olympics

The President was invited as FIH representative and as Hockey is an aspirant member of IPC. We want to develop a hockey game for those with Intellectual Disability. It was a successful visit and Norman Hughes will follow up with the contacts she established there. Norman Hghes will try to do the same for FIH globally that that he did in Europe with ParaHockey. The other continents are starting to come on Board with this project.

It would be fantastic if we can be at the Paralympics in 2028 in Los Angeles.

France Olympic Program

There is a lot to do to organise such a big event. Marc Coudron is helping France on that matter.

What can we contribute to help them?

International relations

Pam is working with AK and SM to have activities ready to go on that topic. Hockey is not well representative at IOC level at the moment. The message is the important thing.

Olympic day: we must come up with suggestions for our NAs.

The President will make a presentation in Lausanne about gender balance in Boards.

Director Generals Report

We had our first full meeting on February 20^th in the EHF office with our staff, some people from Belgium Hockey and Sportizon/Golazo, the external company organizing the event.

The commercial rights discussion is still ongoing.

Our next meeting will be on the 22^nd May at the venue. And Angus will meet with Eleven on April 2^nd.

Continental Federations FIH Meeting

The CF meeting was in Lausanne on the 21^st and 22^nd February. All CFs presented their report and plans for 2018. They received updates on the MOU plan 2019-2022 and the priorities for 2020 about different topics (gender, athletes, anti-doping, anti-corruption, transparency).

They were also updated about competitions, event specialists, ParaHockey, international relations, facilities, Olympic solidarity and the Academy and TAP funding.

The funding will increase by 10% for 2018.

Streaming update

We had 42.000 new subscribers in the last months, with peaks in October with the first round of the EHL, in January and February with the indoor clubs and nations tournaments.

Ireland, Russia, Austria, Finland and England already got started on the platform and discussions are ongoing with the following NAs: Netherlands, Spain, Belgium, Germany, Scotland, Wales, Poland, Malta.

Regarding the analytics review, Siobhan and Ophélie will meet with SportRadar in April to be trained on that.

Facilities Committee update

The committee had its first Skype meeting on February 14^th and will meet face-to-face on March 24^th, straight after the Executive Board meeting, in the EHF office. They are currently looking at building a decision tree to help NAs and clubs find the right pitch. They will get a Polytan presentation on this matter.

General Assembly 2018

It will be held the day before the FIH congress, most probably in India. We must discuss the theme and prepare the business of the day.

Disciplinary report

The late withdrawal reform seems to be efficient as we only had two confirmed withdrawals in the last 5 months. Other disciplinary matters are under control. We are awaiting one matter that may require attention.

The disciplinary commissioner will meet with the competitions manager at spring time.

HR report

We had the first visit of Premed, the prevention advisor. Ophélie completed a first aid course.

We have bi-weekly staff meetings and we are planning Yamila’s return. Tom Smith will work from now on 75% of his time in UK and 1 week a month in Brussels.

Appointments Committee Report

Since the appointment of a new committee in December last the Committee has a slightly new composition. Most of the members were re-appointed and two new persons joined the committee.

John Heron and Yolande Brada are the two representatives to be part of the Education Committee as well. John will join the Working Group Umpires, as Yolande will join the Working Group Officials. Unfortunately, neither could participate at the meeting of the Education Committee in the first weekend of March. John because of the terrible weather conditions in Scotland and Yolande because of work- and personal agreements made already a long time ago.

The indoor season finished, and an evaluation of the season will be done in the next period.

At this moment we are checking the appointments system every day/week to make sure that withdrawals will be taken care of. The committee is working every day on all the appointments. Things are in place but is an ongoing process.  It would be interesting to see if there are less withdrawals now.

Any Other Business

Lithuania has created a new league for kids, showed on local tv with some interviews of the President.

The President closed the meeting by thanking everyone for being here. The next meeting will be held in the EHF office on the 8/9th June 2018.