The Lards are looking for players for next year's tournament.
If you ar up for this make yourself known. If you don't know what worldnet is read the stuff below.
ther are already usurpers out there wanting to take the Mighty Lards Place. Your Lards Need You!
The Internet Football Association represents the teams of football e-mail discussion groups and message boards across the UK. At present we have members from all the Scottish and all the English divisions as well as a number of teams from mainland Europe. In the early nineties many supporters, particularly ex-pats kept in touch with other fans via email. These people tended to be mainly people in technical or academic employment as email was widely available in those professions. These are the people who formed the Internet Football Association in 1996. With the expansion of the world wide web we now include fans from all sorts of backgrounds as well as those who communicate via message boards as well as email lists.
Our founder is Dave "Voice of Football" Walmsley who at the time of Euro 96, wanted to show that football fans could come together in the spirit of the game, play football and build bridges between their respective teams. This was after Graham Kelly the then chief of the FA was publicly sceptical about the ability of English football supporters to behave themselves at Euro 96.
He organised at a tournament called Euronet 96 in Nottingham, one of the host cities for Euro 96. Since then we have grown from the original 16 teams to over a hundred teams. We have an annual two-day knock out tournament, a league and a cup competition. Our competitions are UK based and encourage fans to play football regardless of their ability, gender, race or age.
Our teams normally play their league matches in the mornings before "the big match" and several clubs have been very helpful in ensuring that all those who have played in these matches are able to attend "the big match" that follows. Some clubs give free tickets to the visitors, others ensure that the visitors are able to buy tickets for the match. This is often done in conjunction with official supporters clubs, supporters’ trusts and ISAs in which many of our players are leading lights. Internet football is not just about winning. It's about taking part and building bridges between rival sets of supporters.
Having said that we consider our leagues, competitions and tournaments professionally run and allow for an element of competition and pride in supporting one's home team. We have also ensured that we involve ourselves in the major footballing issues of the day especially anti-racism and anti-sectarianism. We have been successful in bringing fans of opposing teams together in the spirit of the game, to the point where quite unusual alliances and friendships have sprung up. None less than when the IFA cup takes place and teams criss cross the Anglo Scottish border in search of cup glory.
Our tournament, run at the University of Leeds, has been featured heavily on Sky Sports Television and UK Radio, we have hosted teams from Nigeria, Greece and France. WorldNET sees over a thousand fans enjoy two days of football. WorldNET 2008 saw our greatest number of teams ever - 64 - playing for both the Sports Interactive Cup and the Sports Interactive Plate and eight teams playing for the veteran's bowl. WorldNET 2009 is in Leeds on 24/25/26 July. This year we will feature the IFA Challenge Cup Final, an England versus Scotland International and a Veterans Tournament.
We attempt to maintain a website at www.internetfootball.org.uk and we also run our own e-mail discussion list at http://sports.groups.yahoo.com/group/worldnet2002/ . There are copies of our league rules etc. at this site.
Wherever possible we encourage teams to forge links with their parent clubs - to the point where teams who have won our competitions have been presented to supporters on the pitch at senior games, have featured in club programmes and in the case of some clubs have been given official recognition along with support of a more material kind. This has taken the form of donations of kit, use of facilities, assistance with transport costs.
_______________________________________________ the Leeds List is an unmoderated mailing list and the list administrators accept no liability for the personal views and opinions of contributors. Leedslist mailing list [email protected] http://list.zetnet.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/leedslist is Michel Kitabdjian dead yet?
