Members Update - 30/03/2016

Dear Members

There has never been a more exciting time to be involved with CP Football. Providing international leadership and support for our sport and its talented players is at the heart of our purpose. While IFCPF is in its infancy, the sport of CP Football has never been stronger. Since achieving independence we have a record number of participants, tournaments, supporters and dedicated leaders.

While the road to independence has been bumpy, if we continue to work together for the benefit of our sport, we will achieve our vision: Global recognition for Cerebral Palsy Football as a dynamic World Class Paralympic Sport.

I am honoured to provide you with an update of the activities of your Board of Directors. 

1. Development

If you haven’t had the opportunity yet, please visit our website and review our new IFCPF Technical Development Plan (http://www.ifcpf.com/library). We consider this to be a “living” document and we would appreciate any feedback or suggestions you have regarding this plan. We will be setting aside time to discuss this plan with the participants at our two upcoming major tournaments this year, as well as at our General Assembly in November 2016.

Our plan is guided by our mission: We inspire, support and enable individuals with Cerebral Palsy or a related Neurological condition around the World to participate in Cerebral Palsy Football in order to reach their full potential.

The plan establishes six strategic directions (participation, competition, workforce, officials, classification and athlete development) and includes the following goals:

• Increase the number of players, including female players and youth players
• Increase the number of countries competing in national and international competitions
• Provide training to more coaches and qualify more technical delegates
• Increase the number of international referees in all regions
• Qualify more classifiers and roll out our new classification system
• Establish an athletes’ commission, encourage our members to appoint national athlete representatives and provide athlete support programmes.

Achieving the goals in this plan will form the basis for a strong application for inclusion in future Paralympic Games. 

2. Tournaments

Tom Langen has been working to complete our tournament schedule which now includes U-19, regional, and world events. You will see that there are increased opportunities to compete for our younger players as well as our developing countries. In addition, we continue to provide opportunities for our strongest nations to compete.

During a board meeting in Kuala Lumpur we decided to change the name of the 2017 IFCPF Intercontinental Cup to 2017 IFCPF World Championships. This name change reflects feedback received from a number of member nations requesting the inclusion of “world” in our tournaments in order to improve opportunities for funding. The name change also reflects the significance of the tournament.

Consequently, the name of the 2016 IFCPF Qualification Tournament for the Intercontinental Cup in Denmark will be changed to 2016 IFCPF World Championships Qualification Tournament.

We also decided to host two world events in every quadrennial: IFCPF World Championships and IFCPF World Cup. The 2017 IFCPF World Championships will have a more regional representation. The 2019 IFCPF World Cup will focus on the top 16 nations in the world and therefore the qualification pathway for this tournament will be different. Details regarding qualification criteria will be provided when the tournaments are announced. We urge you to consider bidding on one of these important events.

In 2020 our top nations can look forward to the IFCPF World Top 8 tournament. Details regarding this tournament will be announced at a later date. 

3. IFCPF World Championships 2017 – Argentina

We are very pleased to announce that Argentina has been awarded the IFCPF World Championships 2017. Congratulations to Argentina, we are excited to see this major tournament being held in South America where there has been significant growth in CP Football in recent years. 

4. General Assembly

IFCPF’s General Assembly will be held from November 9 – 13, 2016 in Sant Cugat, Spain. Many of you will be familiar with this location because CPISRA’s 2014 General Assembly was hosted in Sant Cugat. We look forward to this significant event – our first ever General Assembly - and we hope to see all of you there. 

5. Board meeting in Kuala Lumpur

We held a very productive meeting with NPC Malaysia, the newly formed Malaysian CP Football Association and a local football club which includes athletes with cerebral palsy as part of their program. We discussed a variety of choices regarding the structure of their organizations and encouraged each of them to continue to work together to grow the sport of CP Football in Malaysia. 

We had preliminary discussions regarding the development of a Strategic Plan. Sandy Hermiston and Jan-Hein Evers will be taking the lead on drafting this document which will be presented for discussion at the General Assembly in November of 2016.

We also finalized the terms of a Memorandum of Understanding with the Asian Football Confederation regarding cooperation with IFCPF to develop CP Football in Asia including working together to ensure that AFC’s Dream Asia Tournament is another successful event.

Annathurai Ranganathan will be taking the lead on setting up a meeting with the Asian Paralympic Council to discuss cooperation in order to further develop CP Football in Asia. 

6. Reminder – Annual Fees and Questionnaire

Your membership fees are due! Please ensure that you pay promptly. If you require

any assistance in paying your fees, please contact Alice Holland (aholland@ifcpf.com).

In addition, it is crucial that you complete the 2016 questionnaire. This information is crucial to ensure that we have all of the information required to make a well documented and evidence based application for inclusion in future Paralympic Games. 

Share your updates!

Please send photos, news stories and anything else you would like to share with IFCPF and the world to our Communications Manager Sam Turner (sturner@ifcpf.com). We depend on you to keep us informed of your activities and it is important to share them as widely as possible to celebrate our success and to encourage further development of our sport. It is important to ensure that your members, especially your athletes, follow us on social media. We have Twitter, Facebook and Instagram accounts and you can find links to these accounts on our website (www.ifcpf.com).

Athlete Representative

Our Athlete Representative James Murrihy (jmurrihy@ifcpf.com) is always ready and available to here from your players. Please ensure that they have his email address so that they can contact him.

In conclusion, we look forward to continue working with all of you to achieve our vision, mission and strategic directions.