Date: Tue, 28 Jan 1997 21:31:25 +0100 From: m-14970-AT-mailbox.swipnet.se (Hugh Rodwell) Subject: M-TH: Re: The Pack Jukka is quite right: >As a former (quite clumsy) ice hockey junior of 'Giants of East' I've >sort of hoped that all-European hockey league could be possible in >order to compete with NHL. But as necessarily fully 'professional' >and commercial it would mean that teams would concentrate to central >European major cities (only such cities as Helsinki and Stockholm >could have teams). Peripheral (northern) areas would lose best >players to euro-league. Finally the quality of Finnish and Swedish >icehockey would come down - we won't have such national leagues, as >today, in the future if euroleague will someday be realized. What do >you think about it? Has such concentration happened in USA with other >sports during 20th century? (Obviously ice hockey teams have went to >south but what about, say, baseball and football? Have there been >such concentration?) The irony of the present stage of development in North American (imperialist heartland) ice-hockey is that it is spear-headed by the products of state planning and national recreation priorities in the degenerated and deformed workers' states (the SU and Czechoslovakia) and the products of health-and-strength-for-all welfare state egalitarian recreation priorities of the Nordic welfare states (at least Sweden and Finland -- at present coached by a Swede). Now of course the curse of capital is blighting the development of the youngsters who will be needed to replace the current heroes in the ex-SU, and the destruction of the welfare state means the destruction of mass participation and recruitment in the Nordic countries. Hakaa paalle! Cheers, Hugh --- from list marxism-thaxis-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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