EHM The Blue Line

Right I will give you an account of exactly what happened:

1. Roughly half a year ago Neil Black went to the IIHF headquaters in Switzerland where he agreed verbally (but not on paper) that GB would host whatever group they were in except if they had qualifed for the top group. This came after the IIHf had been begging GB to host for about the past 3 years.

2.The Closing date to put in a bid to host the group next year was the 29th April. GB put in their bid 1 hour before the deadline with Nottingham as the host arena and also a TV deal had been reached with Sky in which they were going to show every home game live (the home nation must have every one of its game shown live on TV)

3. GB are told they are the only team bidding and have therefore automatically won and they would host whatever group they were in, remember this is prior to announciation of the structure change.

4. GB assuming they have won and don't need to do any lobbying send Andy French and another representative of IHUK to the IIHF congress in Bratislava

5. At Congress (i believe it was on the 10th May) where they announce who has bid for the championships to the complete shock of the GB camp they announce that Slovenia has also bid to host the new world championship division 1A group which had been announced by this time. Now what doesn't make sense here is that Slovenia only got relegated on the 8th of May so how were they allowed to bid!

6. Andy French and his represtentative now who are both completely unprepared now have to start lobbying all of the people who are able to vote before the vote on the 13th May plus they have to make a presentation to present to congress just before the vote

7. As said above the following 2 days are spent lobbying in which Britain were promised enough votes to give them a victory. GB make the presentation on the morning of the 13th May

8. Vladmir Putin turns up in Bratislava and subsequently the vote is delayed one day. Also interesting to note that a couple of hours after Putin turns up both Denmark and Ukraine withdraw their bids for the 2016 WC both claiming they are not ready to host it, therefore Russia automatically win and are now going to host the 2016 WC. Now is it just me or that more than dodgy?

9. Vote taken this morning in which GB are outvoted by Slovenia 15-10

Take from it what you will but it seems to me that the IIHf have unfairly screwed GB over. If the IIHF want to grow the game then they should look to give more tournaments to countries like France and GB but instead they give it to Slovenia who have hosted about 5 tournaments in the past 10 years. I am told though that GB will re-apply to host in 2013