What about the game in Australia?

The last few months (and years) have been difficult for the game in Australia. I recently got some reactions from different players all over the country and some points are really interesting.

Myron Shipp says: "the game has collapsed in Australia. FISTF are thinking of dropping us as only Robert Smith is in the rankings and he doesn't live in Australia. Brett tried to get a tournament going in Sydney with no takers and I tried to get one going at Cancon (Australias biggest games convention) and didn't get one entry. I am going to put on a display game at Bugle Call in June and if that doesn't attract 4 players to a competition I may give up and just play with who ever I can find through the club link. I hope when the game is released in Australia a few more will do internet searches and find me. A player recently got in touch after seeing my name on the blog but he just wanted to donate his stuff to the club so now I have more stuff to not play with."

Steve Dettre also insisted on the fact he's still interested to compete but his time as an organizer is over. Steve tried to get both his boys interested but they have been grabbed by a different 'bug'.... Warhammer (Games Workshop). "They model, paint and play. The emphasis in competitions is on sportsmanship, involvement etc. in tournaments. You can win a tournament without winning all your matches. As a parent, the emphasis on sportsmanship, the extremely detailed "player packs" with pre-tournament information and rules etc are way ahead of what we ever did in subbuteo. There's an emphasis on training, guidance etc by older players too. I still love the game of table soccer and a few of us get together for beer and subbuteo, but I have no clue what's happening with the others."

Eliot Kennedy didn't know Robert Smith is back in the UK: "Without him here maybe things will not happen in a hurry, but you never know. Bob Green is in Australia at the moment for a visit - I am in Malaysia for work this week so may not get to see him. But he mentioned he will be back in September for another visit so you never know, maybe we can get a tournament to happen for his visit."

Finally, Mike Newton also reacted: "I hope we will see some action here soon, I have forgotten what my index finger is for! On a different subject, I keep seeing things from FISTF that look like some real improvements. Obviously the game going back into the shops is good news but there seems to be improvements all round with regular meeting, skype meetings, invitations to various nations to have their say at the meetings."

Hopefully there will be some developments once the gameis available again in the shops. let's hope there will be some more players interested to play.

Robert Smith is still there!

It's been two years already since the last tournament took place in Australia. The FISTF Challenger of Sydney was organized on March 20th, 2010 and as world ranking keep the records of the last 2 years of activity, it means most australian players have now left the ranking. Robert Smith, who lives now in Great-Britain, is the only australian plaer in the FISTF table. He's now 395th (he was 271st last month). So hopefully there will be some more tournaments in the near future. otherwise Australia might disappear of the FISTF map.