Billy Wells has taken on the job of Appointing Referees for the CRHR, having been away from Roller Hockey for some time, and is doing the best job that he can do with the resources that he has at his disposal.
Those resources are the number of referees that bother to respond to him when he asks for their availability for a specific weekend.
Those referees who do not respond are not helping their sport or Billy to do his job.
We are all human and some have other things in their lives apart from roller hockey but we need to help Billy do his job by responding to him in a reasonable timeframe.

We are all aware that there are not enough referees in England to cover the amount of Roller Hockey that takes place.
We, therefore, need to progress the standard of those that we have and to recruit more.
This cannot be done overnight or by one man.

Some of the concerns raised in some of the emails on Friday are shared by me.
They are real concerns.
The allocation of referees has been addressed and will never be influenced by the Clubs.

The issue of the rule interpretation, we knew, would be difficult for a while this season and I have had several comments about differing interpretations being used.
I have responded to this by offering to attend any meeting of referees to discuss and agree a consistent interpretation for all.
I put this offer to those raising concerns in the South, the North and the East.
Thus far only the East has taken me up on my offer.
The offer is still open.
If anybody wants to organise a meeting of referees in their area, I am more than willing to attend that meeting to help resolve any refereeing problems caused by the new rules or, in fact, any of the original rules still in place.

The CRHR has now been taken over by the NRHA Executive.
For personal reasons, the previously elected Chairman of the CRHR has been unable to apply the time to drive the organisation forward.
The Chair of the CRHR is now the NRHA Executive.
I am now in the process of formulating a structure for the CRHR which will include the recruitment of new referees, the progression of existing referees and the fast tracking of potential International referees.
It will be a compilation of input from senior members of our sport, Referees, Coaches and Players.

I hope to get it all finalised for presentation by the end of February.

To launch it, I would request that all the referees in the Country meet at The Bushfields Sports Centre, Peterborough on Saturday 20th March at 10am, where we can discuss the proposed structure and put it into practise.

Why Bushfields?
Because it is reasonably central for everybody, is being used for the National Training Weekend on both Saturday and Sunday and, probably, most importantly, there is a room available that we can use without cost.

Without Referees, we have no sport.
Without the introduction of a properly thought out structure for the recruitment and progression of Referees, we may end up with no Referees.

Keith Allen

The first camp will commence on Friday 6th August and finish on Monday 9th August 2010.
This will be open to the following groups:
Basic Group
Pre Project Group
Ladies Development

The second camp will commence on Friday 13th August and finish on Monday 16th August 2010.
Camp Logo
This will be open to the following groups:
Project 2012
Project 2011
Project 2010
Ladies U20 and Senior

Any players that are not in the National Training List and who are interested in attending Summer Camp 2010 can contact me and I will let them know which camp they can attend.

Farnham RHC will hold their annual National Division One tournament in a new venue 10 miles away from their usual centre, the new venue is in Alton, Hants. The matches are the same as listed in the ND1 schedule with the first match Farnham v Peterborough starting at 8.30am.

Val Conroy NRHA’s National Competitions Secretary recently sent out a revised National Calendar (Issue 4). The new calendar can be downloaded and Val has listed the changes to the revised calendar below:-
1) National training in June is now 5th/6th June, regional training and regional tournaments have been moved to 19th/20th June.
2) National training in August has been moved to 21st/22nd August.
3) Summer Camp 1 is now from 6th – 9th August and Summer camp 2 is now 13th – 16th June.

Graham will long be remembered for his willingness to always be available to assist in anyway or form he could with the new generation and future hockey players of England. He took the role of Club President about 5 years ago, but has been involved in Roller Hockey for much, much longer.

His funeral will take place on the 08/01/2010 in Saint Peters Church in Levenshulme, Stockport Road, Manchester M19 3BS at 14.00 hrs.

Church doors will be open to the public and friends wishing to say goodbye and pay their respects will be most welcome.

As a mark of respect, it would be a very nice gesture to have a moment of silence at any forthcoming games in January.

Chris Freeman

The two HBU Premier League Teams will now comprise the following players :-

HBU 1
Neil AUSTIN
Brendan BARKER
Simon HOSKING
Karl SMITH
Dendy HUDSON
Joe SINGLETON
Joel De FIGUEIREDO
Myles BARKER

Dan BARTON, Jamie WILLIAMSON, David GARLICK (GKs)

HBU 2 (replacing HBU CSL)
Nick BARTON
Matt BARTON
Jon BARTON
Paul McVEY
Philip McVEY
Nigel MILLS
Chris ESPEJO
Steve CLARKE

Garrett PRIESTLEY, Jason ROBERTSON (GKs)

Because one or two of the players, named in the HBU 2 team, have already played in the HBU Premier League team this season, we, the NRHA, have approved, what is effectively a Club to Club transfer for these players, complete with the standard transfer fee being paid.

This is a very unusual thing to happen but we feel that the decision that has been made is the fairest for all concerned.

As far as the Fixture Lists and result sheets are concerned the team previously known as HBU CSL will now be replaced by HBU 2.

Keith Allen
President
NRHA

In July I decided to start the Projects 2011, 2012, 2013 & 2014 in September 2009
To ensure that I had the commitment from parents and players, I sent a form to be signed and returned to me. However, I have only received around 50% of them and I know that some players/parents are very interested in these projects but still have not returned the forms.
So I have decided to progress these Projects without the forms and announce the project squads taking in consideration the National Training Weekend attendance.
The Project Squads are in place but because I have a few question marks in each project, I have decided to carry on one last assessment at this month’s National Training.
I will publish the Project Squads prior to January National Training Weekend.
Therefore, any changes to the groups will be implemented from January 2010.
All the Project Squads will share time on the rink with other projects.
For example, Project 2012 will have share time with 2013 and 2011.
This way we can develop our teams to a higher standard.
It is imperative for all the players that will be announced on the Project Squads attend every National Training or at least 10 out the 12 in a year.
Also the players will be asked to attend at least one camp, one trip abroad as well as extra sessions during school holidays.

Carlos Amaral

Last month in St. Omer, France 27th to 31st October the Ladies played in the European Championship Seniors and although they lost all the games there was a big improvement from 2007 Championship in results as well as the team, which was much more competitive.

Our team was the youngest one in the competition with two 15 year old players, with the oldest player being 23 years old.
This gives us a good future as all these girls still have a lot of room for improvement and more years of playing at this level.

The team played throughout the competition defending individually restricted but on some occasions changing to pressuring the player with the ball and half way line.

I was very pleased with the attitude of the girls on and off the rink, showing their commitment to play for England and we gained even more respect from other countries.

One complaint about this competition was the standard of the referees, who penalised England quite a lot.
Coaches from all the countries made the same comments and the CERH has to be more careful when selecting their referees for this level of Roller Hockey as it is not good for our sport.

England 0 Spain 7 (Half-Time 0-3)
England started the competition against the World Champions

It was not easy playing our first game in the European Championships against Spain, however England played for large periods of the game with good individual defence restricted pressuring the player with the ball.

Basic mistakes due to lack of concentration and reaction cost us at least 4 of the goals.

Although we had the first 2 shots in the game and missed a penalty in the second half the team needs to improve their confidence when attacking.players need to move off the ball more to create pass lines and be more aggressive in the front of the goal as we had good long shots but no there was no player coming in for rebound.

England were more competitive in this game than in previous games against the Spanish which meant that their coach to played their starting line up for the whole of the first half, showing respect to England. Now we are look forward to playing Germany the 2007 European Champions.

This competition is very hard considering we have to play 4 countries Spain, Portugal, France and Germany who between themselves have won the last European Championship Competitions.

Our main objective will be to beat Switzerland to finish 5th however I am expecting to see our team raise their confidence levels every day and to be more competitive in their next matches.

England 0 Germany 6 (Half-Time 0-3)

After first game against the World Champions we then played the European Champions

Photo Gordon Morrison

The team improved from the first game in both confidence and reaction.
Players were very focused the whole game on restricted defence pressuring the player with the ball.

Ball possession when attacking was a great improvement from first game which resulted in more structured attacks and goal scoring opportunities.

The final result reflects some bad refereeing decisions from the French referee considering we conceded 4 goals from penalties and direct free hits of which only one I would agree with referee?s decision. My opinion was corroborated by the other referee after the game.

As I said previously this is not an easy competition and today we play Portugal another top country in the world. However I am still confident that the team will continue to improve everyday.

England 1 Portugal 13 (Half-Time 0-7)

This was the worst performance from the team as we were not concentrated enough.
Poor defending caused a lot of problems to our counter attack and we just could not keep possession of the ball, which is very important at any level of Roller Hockey.
This was a game that we would need to remember but only so we could learn from the mistakes.

England 1 France 10 (Half Time 1-3)
After the Portugal game, the girls showed great attitude and we had one the greatest performances in the first half from an England Ladies team against one the best teams in the competition. Their concentration in defence along with good counter attacking opportunities provided us with the move that was finished by Beth.
In the second half France showed that they had a very strong team and were fitter and a faster reaction capacity. They stepped up a gear and took the game to us and made their opportunities count as they scored seven goals.

England 2 Switzerland 4 (Half-time 2-2)
The last game of the competition to decide 5th / 6th places.
We started the game very well taking the lead twice at 1-0 and 2-1, but the more experienced Swiss team made the difference.

England started with excellent individual defence which caused a lot of problems for the Swiss team.
England deserved to be 2 goals up at half time considering the scoring opportunities created as well as they way we had maintained ball possession and had more shots on target.

In the second half our game was not as good as the first half due to tiredness, however we still dominated the game but with a lucky 3rd goal for the Swiss the onus was on us to score. The team pressured full rink to try and get the goal back.

The job done by the girls was excellent and they deserved to win this game, but it went against us.

Carlos Amaral