The Prague Post
November 22nd, 2008
Endowment Fund     Business Listings ONLINE      Reservations      Classifieds    Subscriptions

Home » Archives » Sports

Penalty shots

Disqualified from the league, Vsetín looks to block Extraliga start

By František Bouc
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
September 12th, 2007 issue

COURTESY PHOTO
CTK

In what may have been one of HC Vsetín's last games ever, Jan Hruska and Matej Stríteský could not contain Lukás Bednarík of HC Litvínov Feb. 2. Vsetín lost 2-0.
The hockey off-season came to an end Sept. 12 when HC Slavia Praha was scheduled to take on HC Mountfield České Budějovice in the opening game of this year’s Extraliga, the country’s top-division hockey league.
However, if a club in east Moravia has its way, the goals scored and effort exerted by players in the game could come to naught.
HC Vsetín, the country’s six-time champion in the late 1990s and early 2000s, has taken unprecedented legal action against the Extraliga’s ruling body, the Association of Professional Clubs (APK). Vsetín is calling for the courts to halt the Extraliga until the final verdict has been drawn on whether the APK had the right to kick Vsetín out of the Extraliga.
This summer, Vsetín became the first club to be disqualified from the league due to financial woes: The team had been unable to pay its loans from the last season. The APK finally had enough and ruled June 6 that Vsetín’s repeated failures to pay violated its licensing conditions. The APK then removed the club’s playing license.
“The APK ruling virtually erased our club from the hockey map. We’ll fight until the last breath to defend hockey in Vsetín,” said the town’s deputy mayor, Lubomír Gajdůšek.
The ruling was a long time in coming, the APK said.
“There is no doubt that Vsetín repeatedly violated Extraliga rules. They owed money to players and did not pay their debts on time,” APK President Ctibor Jech then said. “We did not disqualify them earlier because we did not want to harm the Extraliga competition.”
After an unsuccessful appeal, Vsetín tried to secure a spot in the second division, but the league’s members rebuffed Vsetín’s entreaties. As a result, professional hockey virtually ceased to exist in Vsetín.
“The players stopped practicing and many of them made last-minute transfers to other clubs,” said Vsetín’s head coach Rostislav Vlach, who also admitted that he would most likely end up unemployed.
“It looks like I’ll have to seek some work at the labor office,” he said. “It’s too late to join a hockey team now, when the season is starting.”
Despite Vsetín’s protests, the club could not guarantee that it would be able to pay its budget this season, either, said Vratislav Kulhánek, chairman of the Czech Ice Hockey Association (ČSLH).
“Following the documents that we’ve received from Vsetín, the club’s budget is not consolidated,” he said.
The club’s general manager, Oldřich Štefl, insisted that management was capable of financing the next season.
“All of our past debts have been cleared,” he said.
Political puck
The club’s championship run over the past decade has earned the team fanatical support from Vsetín locals, with fans gathering in a street rally to support the club in May and then later launching an online save-the-team petition.
Now, even local politicians are getting involved.
Joining her deputy, Mayor Květoslava Othová has expressed concern, saying that the club should have automatically been included in the second division after it was dropped from the Extraliga.
Vsetín’s lawsuit has also been supported by Regional Development Minister Jiří Čunek, who previously served as mayor of Vsetín. Then, he contributed to the club’s development by releasing subsidies to the team from municipal budgets.
“The APK made a bad decision and it’s good that Vsetín decided to challenge it legally,” Čunek said.
But the legal challenge is unlikely to save the club, said coach Vlach.
“The team has fallen apart,” he said. “It seems that Vsetín will now lead battles in front of the courts rather than on the ice. This is going to take a long time.”

František Bouc can be reached at fbouc@praguepost.com


Other articles in Sports (12/09/2007):

Browse the Current Issue

If you enjoyed this article, why don't you subscribe to the print version!
We accept secure online transactions provided by PayPal and Moneybookers

Be the first to add a comment!


Full Name: *
City: *
E-mail: **
This comment can be published in the print version of The Prague Post
Enter the text on the right:
 visual captcha
Comment: *
* Required field. In order to be approved for display, comments must have a first and last name and a city.
** E-mails are required and will only be used for internal purposes.

Most visited in Business Listings

Hotel booking
The Prague Post Online contains a selection of articles that have been printed in
The Prague Post, a weekly newspaper published in the Czech Republic.
To subscribe to the print paper, click here.
Unauthorized reproduction is strictly prohibited.