A meeting in Cologne, Germany

In the last week of August and the first week of September 2002 Bethan Walsh (Chair - Wales), Mario Rosado (CCAmerica - Mexico), Steven Cachia (Malta) and I, Xenia Ulrich (Sec - Austria), met in Germany with our host Stephan Haumann (CCEurope - Germany) to watch the Men’s Champion’s Trophy in Cologne and to meet some FIH officials.

Unfortunately, we didn’t get access to the player’s launge and the media center, but at least the German Hockey Association (DHB) was so kind as to let us have free tickets for all days.

Most of us arrived one week before the tournament started, so we had loads of time for sight seeing, building up friendships (as not everybody hat med everyone else in person before) and for meetings between the five of us.

We agreed to set up a policy (which already is finished thanks to Bethan’s great work), to create an Executive Board and to work together with the continental organistions more closely. We sorted out the issues we wanted to discuss with FIH and, as a result of a great marketing strategy, we found a sponsor for the Youth Panel (we are working out a contract at the moment).

After agreeing on what we wanted to talk to Hannah Cox about, we arranged two meetings with her to sort out all the important things on our agenda. There were a lot of things we could get sorted out, and some which took some more time.

But not only the meetings with Hannah were positive for our work, we also had the chance to meet the new EHF Continental Development Officer Norman Hughes, and we set the first steps to our Malta - Germany Exchange Programme.

Some of us agreed to meet again during the Indoor World Cup in Leipzig in February 2003, which we are all looking forward to right now, as we are all planning out trips right now and are very pleased that this time we are going to get access to all areas.

All in all we had a good time with great hockey, built up great friendships and got a lot of organisation work done.

Xenia Ulrich, Saturday 30 November