Wednesday 27 November 2013

Association representatives vs National team captains



The HMB history has seriously changed recently. We saw the announcement that a new world association - Armor Combat League - appears on the international stage and is planning to have its own world class event. Many people all around the world broke their relations with HMBIA which organizes world championship “Battle of the Nations”. That way some national teams are not planning to attend BoN anymore or at least people who are in the team currently.

There are many factors why this happened and one of them is the issue/problem of official HMBIA representatives in the country. Captains started to quarrel that HMBIA decides the issues with the members of national teams without the permission of team captain or even without informing them.

Apart from the fact that many captains did not want to cooperate with HMBIA (and that way the association just had to find someone else in the country) in my opinion there are other reasons why this took place.

First of all let us try to understand what is the role of the team captain in the country and which rights and duties he or she should have.

A national team captain is the person who is responsible for the performance of the team at a certain period (in our case that is a year with a final event at the end), the person who organizes the team and gives the main vector of its development. The team captain currently is also responsible for the selection process and that way chooses the people who will be in the team. Also the team captain is the main communicative link between the team and the association (in our case it is already doesn’t matter which association).

The team captain is selected (or should be selected) by majority of voices of fighters/club captains/other unknown people in the country or he just got the captain’s position somehow and I am sure that this happened in many countries.

So this is the person who has all power to rule the team and influence its opinion in any situation. The captain can develop the necessary opinion to some events and happenings. You ask why and how? Firstly he is the main communicative link with the association (I repeat - with any association or federation or universe counsel or whatever) and secondly most people in the team are just too lazy to know what happens outside their country. It is always easier to ask the captain and not spend its personal time to read the news, follow the events and analyze the hmb/armored combat situation in the world. This negligence provokes misunderstanding of the events that happen. This negligence makes your opinion an easy target to influence.

And now let’s try to understand what should the association representative do in a certain country.

He or she should:
- develop and maintain communication between fighters and the association
- be the communicative link between fighters and association (currently it is in captain’s hands disposition)
- control the selection process and check if it is done in the appropriate way (so to check if everybody had the chance to go through the selections and if the process of selection was fair; currently it is also in captain’s disposition).
- control the election of the new team captain

And now if we have the captain who is the official association representative at the same time, what functions he has and to what it can lead to?

- he organizes and controls the selection process. Result: he can choose anybody and set his own rules (both of the fights and of the selection). he is not under control as he reports directly to the association and association trusts him.
- he is the main communicative link between the fighters and association. So he can run any politics he likes as he is the one who receives information and who transmits it to the fighters. He can influence the opinion both of the fighters and of the association. So there won’t be any actual association’s work with the fighters that way, and we will face the problems which cannot be resolved, because the main communicative link can have interest in it.
- team captain has all the powers and authority (as the official association representative) to decide the direction of the movement development in the country. Again he will not be controlled by anyone.
- team captain can influence the election process of himself, as he can choose the team members and that way choose the people who will be electing him.

If the team captain has all these functions, what will make him not just a captain, he will be an actual president, an emperor, an overlord of the movement in the country who will have all powers to run his own political course without any control by anyone.

Ok, that all sounds like a conspiracy theory, but that actually takes place in some countries and recent events prove it directly. And if all these powers are in the hands of one person, there is no democracy in the management of the team at all even if this person is “elected”.

My personal opinion is that team captain and association representative should be two different people as they work like a counterbalance system to each other. They can control each other’s work and they can prevent each other’s corrupt practices. It is the same like the work of different state services in the country.

So I do not understand why some captains are agitated by the fact that they were not proposed the position of the official representative. If we want to have fair play in the team management, there should be control over the person who rules this team.

I believe that it can possibly be one person on both positions, but only if he is completely dedicated and he is ready to sacrifice his own interests for the benefit of the team, and ready to present the association’s opinion even if he does not agree with it.

That is why I think that it should better be two different people, that way their cooperation and mutual control will help to make the movement development more transparent and more democratic.

The real trust and respect appear only when actions and intentions are absolutely transparent.

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