European Schoolboys Bassano del Grappa
An event that began for most on the Sunday with travel to Stansted airport and a flight to Venice Treviso. 10 players: 2 management: 1 referee and a few parents – others would arrive the following day.
Photo by Miguel Peixoto
This is the referee perspective:
The day began early with a journey from home in Yorkshire to Grimsby to car share to Stansted in order to keep costs down for the trip, (at this stage of the journey no expenses are paid to the English referees by the NRHA, this would change as the week expanded.)
Arriving in Treviso the squad are met by 2 members of the Bassano club, hosts of the event, who would transfer the players and myself to our hotels, also accommodating the transfer of a players’ parents who were a “little stranded” at the airport.
The first drop off after a 30 minute ride and a altercation with the back of a car on a side road was the referee base, a four star hotel about 500 metres from the rink, this hotel was more than accommodating for any request made throughout the week. As I might add were any of the organising members. Requests were always met with, yes or at least we will try.
After checking into the hotel, I met up with my room mate for the week, Portuguese Referee Louis Miguel Peixoto, whose photos are connected to this article.
Others would arrive as the day expanded, all with varied European championship experience, Jurgen from Germany and Mario (Italy) the most experienced followed by myself and then the newcomers Tony (Spain), Boris (France), Johannes or Wesley as he would become known (Swiss), Carlos (Italy)
Monday: began with the team accreditations and the referee meeting, held at the rink with CERH President Carlos Graca. Here instructions were given and expenses for the week expanded upon.
“ hotels costs would be paid by the organisers at full board, daily rate would be 13€ per day for 8 days, and all travel expenses of course were down to each countries association, at which point knowing the situation of England Snr Graca and without prompting said he would speak to Mr Allen. Which he dually did and resolution made.
He also informed us that due to Illness a replacement committee member would be arriving to assist at the event, one Mrs Barker of England and “hop along Aileen” (on crutches form an accident)arrived that evening.
Monday evening the matches began and ran through till Saturday, I actually covered 8 matches through the sessions, which had 8 sessions mainly on evenings though on day time session on the Wednesday was programmed.
I am not going to do a breakdown of matches covered and what happened here.
The days were filled with trips to Bassano town centre, very historic and pretty looking. To Grappa breweries, of course without sampling – we were “at work” after all.
Following the final, presentations were made to all teams and referees and off back to the hotel for the “final supper”.
Sunday morning was an early start back en route to England.
From my point of view a very enjoyable trip with a group of referees who made it even more so.
Mike Richardson (Spinner)
