EIHA (UK) vote to keep fragmented style

16 Dec 2020Robert Newbolt»

Members of the English Ice Hockey Association (EIHA) have rejected a proposal to dissolve the organisation and have a new governing body take responsibility for ice hockey in the United Kingdom as a whole.

In the UK the ice hockey is set up so that EIHL (Elite Ice Hockey League) is responsible for Elite teams and the IHUK (Ice hockey United Kingdom) covers the rest of the English tournaments, plus the SIHA (Scottish Ice hockey Association) covers the teams in Scotland. This set up has long been felt unwieldly and detrimental to ice hockey as a whole in Britain.

And so it was felt that a new body governing the entire structure would be helpful but at the EIHA Annual General Meeting (AGM) on Saturday (December 12), the special resolution which would have seen the new body take control of the sport in England did not receive the 75 per cent of yes votes needed to pass.

It was widely felt that too many people at the top have their own agendas with regard to the running of the sport to make it likely that they would acquiesce to a new regime.

EIHA (English Ice Hockey Association) chairman Ken Taggart says the Association will come back stronger from Saturday’s AGM and that the wider membership will be heavily involved in the rebuilding process.

Taggart said: “The membership have made their decision,” he said.

“We will take a short pause to reflect on the work required to update the Company Articles for the EIHA as a stand alone body.

“Our first immediate challenge is for the Return to Play of all our teams within Covid-19 restrictions, and the filling of our operational roles to support our players and teams in coming back to the sport.

“We have an enormous amount of work ahead for the Board, and the teams will also be involved as the process moves forward.”