| Minutes | 21st June 2019, EHF Office, Brussels Belgium | |||||
| MEETING | Executive Board | |||||
| ATTENDEES | Marijke Fleuren, Mika Rihtila, Carola Meyer, Walter Kapounek, Inez Cooper, Patrick Keusters, Pamela Michaelis, Peter Elders, Simon Mason, Leonardas Caikauskas, Pamela Michaelis, Angus Kirkland Ophélie Duquesne, EHF Administration Manager | |||||
| APOLOGIES | David Serrahima | |||||
| Agenda topics | ||||||
| President’s Welcome, Marijke Fleuren | ||||||
| The President welcomed everybody and opened the meeting with comments on all the work being done by Board members –and made special note that it was Leonardas Caikauskas his last full Board meeting, having served for 16 years as a member! The President was particularly pleased with the launch of the #EquallyAmazing, which received appreciation from many quarters, including the IOC and EU Sport. The campaign is raising awareness of the EHF Gender Balance Charter, that we will be looking to National Associations to sign up to, during the General Assembly. She thanked the Board Members and the staff for all their work for hockey. The President apologized for the absence of David Serrahima. | ||||||
| Minutes of Last Meeting | ||||||
| DISCUSSION | The minutes of the last Executive Board meeting, which took place in Brussels on 21st & 22nd March 2019, were reviewed and Angus went through all the action points and updated the Board on them. The Minutes were then approved. Comments on the minutes from the previous meeting: Marijke Fleuren urged the Board members to get stories for the 50 golden stories project. They can send them too Siobhan Madeley, even if they are are not too long. | |||||
| Matters Arising | ||||||
| DISCUSSION | The Finnish U16 boys’ team is participating to the U16 Championship in July. They have an issue with a 12 year old goalkeeper as he won’t be 13 year before the start of the event (which is the minimum age limit for U16 events). But Finland has no other goalkeeper in that age category that will be 13 year before the start of the event. | |||||
| DECISION | After some discussion the Board agreed to make a one-off exception, but this has to be stated very clearly and EHF has to inform the opponents. | |||||
| Communications & Commercial Report, Siobhan Madeley / Simon Mason / David Serrahima | |||
| DISCUSSION | Simon Mason updated the Board on all the streaming content that had been delivered since the last meeting and gave an overview of the Statistics of our communications channels. Siobhan is working hard on delivering stories celebrating 50 years of the EHF in the run up to the General Assembly and 50th celebration but due to a lack of stories provided this will be limited. The Hall of Fame received 21 public nominations which have been shortlisted to 7 with two to be chosen for induction. Voting is due to close on Friday 28th. Angus Kirkland updated the Board on the Commercial approach and informed them that Jokko De Wit has been appointed to support the Commercial drive for partnerships. | ||
| Competitions Committee Indoor Report, Walter Kapounek / David Voskamp |
DISCUSSION | Walter Kapounek reported on the Indoor meeting held in Minsk where the Committee was well hosted. Work is ongoing preparing for the 2020 Indoor Championships. Walter informed the Board of the hosts for the club Indoor tournaments and Indoor Club events. Walter informed the Board about the new proposal regarding umpires for Indoor top events. We will have to be careful about the development of our umpires and that we don’t always appoint the same people to top events. Because, if we do so, when these umpires retire, we won’t have any successors. The Education, Appointments and Indoor Committee are all aware of this and will be mindful of this when appointments are done. |
| DECISION | The Board approved the following recommendations from the CCI: o Venues indoor club events 2020 o Venues indoor Junior Championships 2020 o Proposal regarding umpires for top Indoor events |
| Competitions Committee Outdoor Report, Walter Kapounek / David Voskamp | |||
| DISCUSSION | Walter reported that the planning and preparation for the busy Nations Outdoor season was all in hand. He also confirmed to the Board that Italy (U21 women), playing in the Championship II, cannot promote or be first reserve for the World Cup 2021, as they withdrew too late from the Championships 2 years ago. | ||
| Euro Hockey League, Angus Kirkland | |||
| DISCUSSION | Angus Kirkland updated the Board about EHL. The next EHL Board meeting is scheduled for June 28th. The season was a success on and off the field with a great win for the Belgium side Waterloo Ducks and ABN signing on as Presenting Partner for the next three seasons. Work is underway for the new KO16 format to be held in Barcelona in October and the EHL Board will discuss, budgets, sponsorships, and the format for Easter at its next meeting. The branding of EHL is currently being updated to a more modern fresher look. | ||
| Development Projects Report , Tom Pedersen-Smith / Peter Elders | |||
| DISCUSSION | The President reported on her visit to Small Club of the year Mladost – she was very impressed with the activity and commitment in the club in all areas to include everyone. Peter Elders reported that despite there being no committee meetings since the last Board meeting a lot of work had been undertaken. All preparations for the Youth Festival and ParaHockey event at EHC are ongoing. | ||
| Education Committee – Umpires, Tom Pedersen-Smith / Inez Cooper | |||
| DISCUSSION | Inez updated the Board on the different activity of the group. The U4E program was again oversubscribed. All preparations are ongoing for Breda, where we have 2 new female mentors. The UDP program is doing well. A huge amount of activity is being done by a small group of people. | ||
| Education Committee – Officials, Tom Pedersen-Smith / Inez Cooper | |||
| DISCUSSION | The official’s groups are getting ready for Breda. The group is hoping to have someone doing a TD seminar (it might be an option to do it with EHL and not at Breda). The UM seminar is all in hand and each UM will be charged for his participation. | ||
| Education Committee – Coaches, Tom Pedersen-Smith / Inez Cooper | |||||||
| DISCUSSION | This group is very unique and working separately from the rest. Lot of work has been done recently for SNG. In the past, they were more focused on individuals and top coaches, now they also help set up coaches’ pathways with Greece as a first recipient. | ||||||
| Hon Treasurer’s Report, Mika Rithila | |||||||
| DISCUSSION | The Board approved the accounts for 2018. Mika Rithila went through his report. No major facts have to be reported. The Board approved the 2020 budget, which will be presented at the General Assembly. We will explain during the General Assembly to all the NA’s the set-up of an EHF b.v. in The Netherlands and the consequences for the future. | ||||||
| FIH Report, Walter Kapounek / Marijke Fleuren | |||||||
| DISCUSSION | The Hockey Series Open and Finals won’t take place anymore after this year. The IOC require two possibilities to qualify for the Olympics. The Continental Federations winners automatically qualify for the Games. FIH are now looking for CFs to provide part of the second pathway by having quotas (to be finalised) from each CF compete in a final qualifying tournament run by the FIH (format to be determined). However, part of this second pathway means that all NAs must have a chance to qualify within an Olympic cycle. EHF took this as an opportunity to rethink his Championships system with relegation and promotion. A working group is working on a scheme with qualification events in the even years based on a “snakeing” the rankings through 4 pools with the winners progressing to the EHC and the remaining Championship divisions determined by the final standings of the teams in the qualification events. This would be the new pathway to qualify for the Olympics and for Europe. Teams that had reached the semi-finals of the previous edition would be given automatic qualification to the next edition of the EHC. The CCO will discuss this in more details in their next meeting and come back with a proposal to the Board. In the future, any international sanctioned game will provide points for the FIH World Ranking. Officials age limit The guideline from FIH regarding age limit was never discussed and approved by the FIH Board. The Board agreed for events under our jurisdiction that we would retain how we have operated to date and not have an age limit. FIH Committees The Continental Federations could nominate 2 candidates per committee (1 man and 1 woman), but there were lot of disappointments because we had lots of nominations from Europe and not everybody was chosen for the committee or even put forward to be part of the committee. | ||||||
| DECISION | The Board agreed that the age limit would not apply to EHF events. | ||||||
| Director Generals Report, Angus Kirkland | |||||||
| DISCUSSION | Strategic plan and operations plan As discussed in the last meeting, the Executive Board will review the strategic and operations plans in the September meeting. The strategic plan was launched in 2016 and we can find it on our website. Angus proposed that at the 2020 General Assembly we update the current Strategic Plan 2017-2024 to 2021-2028. The staff have reviewed the Operations plan for 2019 and will prepare the new one for 2020 and assign the Board members to their specific areas. The Board members will have approx. 4 weeks to input into their areas. It is assumed that the plans they have to be sent to FIH to discuss during the CF meeting in November. EHC 2019 the next meeting is the 3rd July. The TD’s will visit the venue this Sunday. The Pro League going on is a great help for the preparation of the EHC, the layout of the venue is really good. The sponsorship is going very well, it is all sold, and the hospitality exceeded the first target. The men’s final is sold out already since a few weeks. There were lot of promotional campaigns (radios, social media, newspaper) to promote the event. The TV rights have been more a challenge than previous year, the market is saturated due to the Pro League. General Assembly 32 NA’s will be attending. We have received nominations for EB. The 50th anniversary celebrations will be at the Ramada during the lunch period of the General Assembly. Discipline Nothing major to report. EHF committee organigram The Coaching group needs a representant at the Board (with the development committee). They will meet once a year but alone, not with other groups. They can have their own terms of reference. There should be someone on the Board for each committee. Athletes committee We received 4 women and 2 men candidates. We will have 1 FIH representant (the 2 EHF rep at the FIH Athletes Committee will be chairing responsibilities). We had only 2 men applications, so they are automatically on the committee. For the women, we had 4 candidates, so there will be elections (at the U21 and senior events). | ||||||
| DECISION | The Board approved to have a pay per view live stream available on EHTV in countries where it is not geo-blocked. | ||||||
| Appointments Committee Report, Angus Kirkland | |||||||
| DISCUSSION | Angus Kirkland presented the report on behalf of the committee. Appointments has been a huge challenge in 2019 due to the Pro League. | ||||||
| Any Other Business | |||
| DISCUSSION | We have currently no news about the Pakistan situation with the Pro League. Simon Mason is still waiting for some brands about the license project, for which there is an appetite. He will come back with more information in a future meeting. EHF is working with the European gambling commission for the EHC. A letter will go out to NA’s to explain this. The President closed the meeting thanking everyone for their contributions and looking forward to an exciting summer ahead for the EHF! | ||