IFAF: Men’s tackle European Championship postponed to 2021

IFAF’s Men’s European Championship has been now postponed until 2021 following a virtual meeting of all the countries involved.

In a video conference held with the 19 participating nations an almost unanimous decision was reached to postpone the tournament, originally scheduled to begin August 1.

The first round of the 2020 tournament was scheduled to take place on the weekend of August 1 with teams bidding for the home games.

The defending champions, Team France, were grouped together with the winners of the Group A divisions – Italy, Finland and Sweden – in now what is known as the Top Group.

The second-place finishers in each group – Austria, Serbia, Great Britain and Denmark – were set to face each other in a Mid Group round-robin tournament that will determine the 5th to 8th positions while teams that ended up in third in each group – the Czech Republic, Russia, Switzerland, and the Netherlands – were to have their own separate tournament to decide spots 9-12 in the Bottom Group.

According to a decision of the group, the schedule for 2021 will remain the same as was originally planned in 2020. The tournament rounds will still be held in the same months with the semi-finals in August and the finals in October.

IFAF Statement:

Due to the uncertainty surrounding a full return to sporting activities in all of the IFAF’s European member states and free circulation across national borders, the countries met on May 28 to discuss the postponement of the final stage of the Men’s Tackle European Championship to 2021.

Nineteen countries met via videoconference on May 28 to discuss the future of the European competitions that have been suspended due to the health crisis currently affecting the entire world.

Despite there being a hint of some positive news on the horizon with the gradual drop in the number of infections in every country in Continental Europe, the lack of any clear, unequivocal talk about the possibility of a full return to the sporting activities associated with our sport or European citizens being allowed to freely leave their countries led to member states of IFAF Europe to decide to definitively postpone all games in the final stage of the Men’s Tackle European Championship to 2021. However, they will still be held in the same months: the semi-finals in August and the finals in October.

To this end, the IFAF guarantees to carefully monitor how the health crisis progresses in each of the countries involved in the championship, and has scheduled a meeting to review the situation on February 1, 2021, when they will confirm whether or not the dates planned for the completion of the European Championship are still appropriate.

The decision was almost unanimous, considering that protecting the health of their players, technical staff and fans is of paramount importance to all of the federations involved and their shared desire to uphold the excellence of such a high-level championship.

The newly-formed Continental Competition Committee is hard at work on how to potentially reschedule all the other competitions that had been planned for this ill-fated 2020 as well as the fixtures already agreed for the 2021 calendar.