the feeder world champs was held in south africa two years ago so i suppose its just a matter of time before the non feeder world champs is held outside europe 😀 😀

oh and south africa were the winners so every chance a non european team could win it on their home soil 😡 😡

I may be wrong in this but didn’t the ladies world championships get held at the same venue is south Africa one year

I know a lovely lady from the ADB who was in the womens shore angling team in SA. They had to stump up the money for them and their kit to go – by themselves.

Mick Thill proposed a few times for the world champs to be in the States. But the cost of all the teams getting there with gear was prohibitive at the time and probably still is. However, I also guess that applied to South Africa. Many of the former soviet eastern block countries get team sponsorship through the military (or did) but for those that don’t it does become financially unviable if you can’t drive. Even in those countries you were looking at a minimum of £1600 per person to compete once travel, food, accommodation, entry fee, bait etc was all taken into consideration. Add flights and excess luggage charges to that and you wouldn’t get much change our of three grand per person.

lets face it – if you make it outside europe by continent – then most of the smaller nation teams would not be able to afford it – like ireland, scotland and wales and long running FIPS supporters like San Marino or the Channel Islands. So you could say its self-defeating – that said – the chinese seem to have taken to their own version of match-fishing and would eventually expect more asian teams to wish to become involved? As like Russia and some E.European teams might think they might get state assistance in order to compete.