The TEM Under 16 boys leave today (Monday) for Europe.

The main purpose of the trip is to play in the 19th ABN Amro International Easter Tournament for Top Teams Under 16 in Valkenswaard, Netherlands.

This prestigious tournament has previously had teams from Belgium, Germany, Russia, Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary, Italy, Spain, USA, Canada, England, Scotland, Ireland, South Africa, Zimbabwe, France, Switzerland, Austria, Lithuania and the Netherlands. In 2008 for the first time an Australian team will be competing.

TEM will be competing in the tournament which is being held over the Easter weekend. The TEM Under 16 team for the tournament is the same team which won the George Stapleton Shield Under 15A competition last year. Former Vikings and Australian Under 20 player Malcolm Kemp is coaching the team for the tournament, with help from the coaching guru himself, Mike Craig.

There are 12 boys teams in the competition including national teams from Czech Republic, Lithuania, Russia and Wales; and club teams from England, Ireland, Belgium, Germany with three teams from Netherlands. Anyone who would like more information on the tournament should go to http://hod.iet-online.nl/

After the tournament, the boys are off to Paris for a couple of days sightseeing, then on to Barcelona where they are playing two games against Club Egara and Atletic Terrassa, matches organised by the TEM Spanish connection. After five days in Spain, they fly to London where they play a game against club team Southgate, catch a English Premier League game at Craven Cottage, taste London’s theatres and check out the sights.

It will be a fantastic experience for the boys who have all been working hard over the summer earning their spending money. Good luck guys.

This news item was submitted by TEM to info@thehockeyshow.org

The Hockey Show is proud to announce a new partnership with TruStorm Software, the makers of Hockey Pro.

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The Hockey Show

At 9.30pm on Wednesday July 2nd, The Hockey Show is BACK on your television screens for Season 2008…..so put this in your diary’s folks. None of this penciling in stuff…like full on, black permanent texta…and get ready to be entertained for 13 weeks…Hockey Show style.

This year we aim to capitalize on the hype surrounding the Beijing Olympics and are damn excited about the possibilities!!

With your help, the gang hope that this season will be the best ever, so we are asking for your suggestions for segments and things you’d like to see on the show this year, so get a “commenting” and let us know what you want to see!

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The Hockey Show crew was fortunate enough to be up in our nation’s capital for the play-offs of the AHL on Saturday. Despite Victoria’s disappointing final position in the tournament it was thrilling to witness the individual success of some of the Vic boys – gaining selection in the Beijing Olympic Squad. You can see a full list of the squad in No.3′s post on the forum, but on behalf of the entire crew and no doubt the entire hockey community our sincere congratulations go to Trav Brooks, Luke Doerner, Andrew Smith, Stephen Mowlam and Russell Ford (pictured below). Five Players into the Olympic squad is a fantastic achievement. We’re all extremely proud!

The Hockey Show will be closely following their preparation for the games in August and will keep you updated as news, or more importantly gossip, comes to hand.

It was also brilliant to see Glenn Simpson, Ian Smyth and Chris Ciriello all in the development squad. They will all hopefully be pushing for selection in the London Squad in 2012.

Stay tuned for more on THS’s road trip to Canberra as well some video updates and footage from the series.

Well, we’ve had the worlds greatest Barista and now we have the next Einstein.

Yep that’s right – John Fedderson of Hawthorn Hockey Club is off to Oxford University, England to drink twinings, learn Shakespeare, speak in an English accent and generally become a very learned individual.

The Hockey Show considers itself the supporter of all hockey players in Victoria so we have gotten in touch with John and offered our (and all of our fans) assistance to help him pass his entrance exam.

Here are some of the questions off his entrance exam…..lets see if we can help him out and that way, we can all be Rhodes Scholars in our own little way!

Mary Cassatt, an impressionist painter. Was the epitome of the ———- American : a native of Philadelphia who lived most of her life in Parts.

(A) Conservative

(B) Provincial

(C) Benevolent

(D) Prophetic

(E) Expatriate

Choose which of the answers is analogous to the two words above:

DISAPPROBATION : CONDEMN

A. calumny : eulogise

B. enigma : enlighter

C. fallacy : diseminate

D. exhortation : urge

E. solvency : deploy

Choose the antonym: banal

a) dry

b) tropical

c) enthusiastic

d) original

e) noisy

Fill in the blank: Some scientists argue that carbon compounds play such a central role in life on earth because of the possibility of ………………… resulting from the carbon atom’s ability to form an unending series of different molecules.

a. variety

b. stability

c. deviations

d. invigorations

e. reproduction.

Pretty straight forward questions really….

What are your answers?

PS No googling allowed!!!

Move aside Oscars. Forget about BAFTAs. Golden Globes – rubbish.

When you think of awards nights only one word comes to mind when you are talking glamour, glitz and amateurish production values – yep that’s right – it’s the Australian Community Television Awards – “The Antennas”.

The Hockey Show has once again managed to snag nominations for this prestigious, amazing, world-class event, following our wins in 2005 and 2006.

This year we have been nominated for:

Best Sports Program

Best Male Presenter – Ballza

The Antennas are held on Thursday 24 April inside BMW Edge at Federation Square.

If we win, then we’ll surely tell you all about it.

If we lose, well, we will have been robbed.

The winners of a FREE DVD from The Hockey Show for being amongst the first to sign up to the brand new subscription service are:

Emily Inness
West Vic Hockey

Michael Lawlor
CV Blazers

Susie Herbert
TEM

Steven Ondarchie
Greensborough

Katie O’Loughlin
Altona

Congrats!

Make sure you too subscribe like these guys to be in with a chance to win loads of prizes and free stuff throughout the year!

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So with Adam Wallish heading off to new, and no doubt financially greener pastures I thought it may be worth looking at what he was worth – literally.

Of course this kind of information isn’t made public, but thats not going to stop me speculating wildly – not that I need to though because with some analysis it is conceivable that we can get a guesstimate of the renumeration that was being paid for the top job in hockey.

Lets take a look at the most recent Annual Report from HV, released in April last year the 2006 report sites 7.5 staff were working in the HV offices over the year (the 0.5 being a part time role). The report also reveals that employee renumeration for the year was $402,034 – which on the face of it seems like a lot of money especially if you consider it was almost 7 times as much as what was spent on development of the game across the state.

But we aren’t getting any closer to working out what you can expect to be paid if you get the keys to the SNHC (or at least a pass that gives you a discount from the pimple faced state government attendants at the front door).

So lets talk about what the other roles were and work our way up, the roles were…

Development Manager
Competition & Events
Competition & Events
Communications & State Teams
Administration Assistant
Community Officer (part time)
Accounts

Before I continue, in case anyone is wondering, the coaches and support staff for the state teams are actually accounted in a different area and so the figure for employee benefits can only be assumed to cover off the office staff as listed in the AGM report.

Now the only role I can give a firm price tag too is the Communications officer, which was advertised in October and i am reliably informed was paying around $36k. You would suggest the admin assistant would be on less than that (say $33k) and that the other roles would be on slightly more ($45k) – excepting the part time role – which lets guess at over half of the communications role, so $20k. When you add all those together you’re looking at a grand total of $269k – which we can bump up to $270k just to keep it tidy.

That leaves us to do a simple subtraction from the total employee expenses to arrive at the figure of $130k.

Now even if some of the roles did pay more than estimated there is still no doubt the CEO has been taking home over $100k and most likely an amount closer to the $125k mark.

Which leaves me pondering three questions…

1. Did we get value for money from Adam Wallish over the past few years?

2. Is financial reimbursement on this scale necessary to attract the right candidate for the job? Should it be higher?

3. Were there bonuses and incentive payments involved and if so what targets were they set for? If there werent perhaps there should be – perhaps tagets related to sponsor income being doubled (in 2006 it was just $40k)

I guess we can all make our own judgments on the answers to these questions – I’ll share my opinion on them with you in the coming weeks.

Stevie Wonder sang about it and he was blind.

…wow, that’s awkward. Some may even say…SUPERSTITIOUS...(if they said that, they’d be wrong…but you all diggin?)

As the season approaches, and things start to heat up with The Hockey Show Cup pre-season tournament, we’ve once again hit that day of days. The day of the week that we all look forward to.

GAME DAY.

So I got to thinking, there have got to be some seriously weird superstitions out there.

There are those typical ones, left sock on before right one, rah rah rah…but I want to see the weirdest and the wackiest. Even ones you’ve heard of, witnessed in the changeroom…that guy that takes a little too long in the cubicle…revving himself up……..to a point…where he’s gonna..HE’S GONNA………….well, you know what I mean.

I once played with a bloke who would not start getting dressed to play unless he had 10 black cat lollies. Someone stole them one one day and he refused to get ready. He missed the warm-up because someone had to go to the corner store to get them for him. What a whackjob.

It can start from the moment you wake up. Even the night before…what is it, that gets you prepped to a point that you’re raring to go each and every week. What is your pre-match routine?

Check out your club’s first match in The Hockey Show Cup! Matches have been scheduled at a number of suburban grounds across the weekend. The Cup is, of course, a knockout competition with the winners progressing over four weekends to the final where they will be competing for $500 cash prizemoney.

WOMEN’S CUP

MEN’S CUP