"We are respected in the international hockey society"

How would you describe your four years cadence?

ZI.: We lost many forces for fighting with club activists, which believed in miracles, and we had to explain to them, that hockey needs much work to make success. The Hockey Federation is functionally OK. Everybody knows what has to be done. We don’t have any arrears; next year will end with a positive financial balance. We are respected in the international hockey society; entire IIHF World Championship in Krynica-Zdrój will be the 2nd seniors’ competition in Poland during my cadence, moreover we organized three junior World Championship in different junior categories.

Lately you announced you won’t be reelected. Are you considering changing your mind?

ZI: I’m a serious man and I’m not throwing words in the wind. In my opinion managing a Federation is something like relay-race. I made a very strong shift and I’m glad to give baton to the next man, who will continue my work. But if there will be no candidate, or I’ll regard that the candidate or candidates are extremely inadequate I’ll change my mind. I confess that there is a group of activists, which would like to see me as a President once again.  

Fans are more interesting in sports results than the functioning of the Federation, and the results are far from their expectations.

ZI: There are some small successes, like the results of Women’s National Team or Juniors. In my opinion even if in Federation there would suddenly appear great amounts of money we would not be able to make successes in the near future. From the organizational side National Team players have everything they need – good logistic and health service. The problem is low quality of training in the clubs. The clubs are responsible for preparing hockey players to the season, and when we were making the endurance test during the National team camp in August there were maybe three players which met the standards. Who is responsible for that? The Head coach of the National Team? Unfortunately there are no activists in clubs that are interested in youth training, because it’s not going to give a reward very soon.

Don’t you thing, that the Federation is totally helpless?

ZI: Of course not. We create a very good strategy. It is based on three pillars. Firstly, if the youth training level is so low in clubs, it’s necessary to make longer youth training on a central basis. Look at the fact that  when the Polish National Team had their greatest successes, was when the National Team camps lasted 120 days per year. Secondly, very helpful would be naturalization of three Slovak defenders, because we’ve got the biggest lacks. And finally, we would create good incentive system for NT players, which would be founded by sponsors.

Are you not afraid, that naturalization can be controversial as in the Polish Football National Team?

ZI: We know about different opinions in this case. I don’t look at it from an ideological position. Firstly, according to IIHF rules, every player who would play for Poland has to play at least two seasons in the Polish league. It’s the primary reason we almost lost Wojtek Wolski (born in Zabrze, POL) for the Polish National team. We’re not traveling over the world looking for players who would play for our National team. We are talking about players who have been playing in PLH for some years (Zatko since 2006, Kubat since 2007), who have wives or girlfriends here, talking the Polish language and really want to play in the Polish National Team.

Naturalization is an emergency method, and for some clubs we can’t expect they change their opinion about youth training, so can we expect we’ll raise some better youth hockey players?

ZI: During my cadence we increased the number of training centers from four to seven. The number of players also increased from 2200 to 3200. For youth, talented hockey players a good way could be repeating the way of Mariusz  Czerkawski, who went to Sweden when he was 19. Unfortunately, we have many players, who would rather play in Poland and be a local super star than to look for a new challenge. They don’t think about the future, and starting to play abroad at senior age is extremely hard. The example should be Wojciech Szczęsny (Polish football goalie, playing for Arsenal London). He’s an example how a young talented player thanks to brave decisions and hard work is making success.

 

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