After a turbulent summer in which there was speculation about the future of Znojmo hockey, it is finally clear. Orli Znojmo continue in the second hockey league, Pavel Ohera remains the president of the club. However, there was a redistribution of competences, the slimming of the implementation team and the composition of a practically new team. What are his ambitions? What happened in the summer? And where does the club aspire in the long term?
What is your role in the club now?
I remain the owner of the club. However, I will not continue to be significantly involved in its functioning, financially or in the composition of the staff, others will be in charge of this. The functioning of some people at the Znojmo town hall leads me to this decision. I indicated that as long as such chaos reigns there, I do not intend to support any activities in Znojmo. I don’t think I’m the only Znojmo entrepreneur in this. At the same time, I was elected to the youth executive committee of Brno Kometa, so this position will also take some time.
Let’s jump back to last year’s season in the CHANCE league, which ended in relegation. How do you rate it retrospectively?
Of course it was a big disappointment for us. It’s definitely partly my fault. We went into a competition with a team that had gotten used to playing contact hockey the year before in the second league, and suddenly we faced a completely different style of play. We couldn’t adapt to him. In addition, I am convinced that the older players did not pull as well as they should have.
Was that the main mistake?
Their opinion was that we are capable of keeping the league and that the team that won promotion to the second league the year before should not be torn apart. However, the players who scored twenty or thirty points a floor below could not make it in the first league at all. We had a lot of them here, and unfortunately it turned out that they were not fit for the competition. The older players constantly urged everyone to keep calm, moreover, there were no quality hockey players on the market that we could bring. Unfortunately, it turned out the way it did. The second thing is that we didn’t manage the endings of the matches at all. I don’t want to name a specific match, but we certainly lost fifteen or twenty points there. You have to learn from mistakes.
So now the club is waiting for the second league again, what are its ambitions?
We would like to play in the Moravian group at the front of the table. It is difficult for me to set a specific goal, the clubs’ squads are still being formed. It looks like Tábor will be shot in the Czech part, they went crazy there in a good sense of the word and are building a very strong team. Havířov looks ambitious in the Moravian part. I’ll put it this way… I’d be happy if we get to the semi-finals. The finale would be amazing.
The club presented the first part of the squad, there is a large representation of young players, but also some mainstays from last year’s team. So who does not make the team?
Petr Hrachovina is responsible for the composition of the squad as sports manager. He has contacts and I believe that we will be able to put together a competitive team. We will enter the competition with a slightly smaller squad than the fans are used to, but we do not rule out that we will continue to strengthen during the season, depending on the situation.
Even before it was clear about the further development of Znojmo hockey, most of the players from last year’s team signed elsewhere. Were there any that you would be interested in?
I was in close contact with Tomáš Svoboda, but exactly as you say, there was uncertainty and it was not clear how it would all turn out. Some groping also took place with Dominik Groh, but he had big demands that we couldn’t fulfill. Otherwise, no.
The head coach is Milan Procházka, a native of Znojmo, why was he chosen?
Milan is a local boy, passionate about hockey. He trained youth, he enjoys his work. We believe that he deserves a chance in senior hockey and that he will be a good fit for the team. Jirka Beroun and Tomáš Jakeš dragged it on for a very long time and I think they need to rest mentally.
Let’s go back to the uncertainty that prevailed in the spring regarding the further direction of hockey in Znojmo. How do you assess the whole situation?
I am convinced that the only effort of the “competing” entity Hynek Blaha was to get us away from the winter stadium. His cooperation with some people at the town hall was to help this step significantly. First of all, they believed his “fairy tale” about a mysterious English investor who will come and renovate the ice stadium without claiming anything and make several million euros available for the operation of the club every year. I’ve been in business for many years, but I don’t believe in miracles. In addition, according to our information, his only contact with the ICEHL was that he submitted a late application there. She was swept off the table. The mysterious investors had pre-arranged two meetings with the league management, but for some strange reason they did not show up. At the same time, it is surprising that through his intermediaries, especially Mr. Antonović, Mr. Blaha should have wanted the license for the second league, which my club owns, the most. All this leads us to believe that the intention was to create euphoria around the ICEHL, then shrug, say that it didn’t work out for many reasons, and play the second league as a savior. I prefer not to elaborate on his “dismissal” of the employees of the winter stadium and other excesses.
It would be good if Mr. Blaha dealt primarily with his obligations behind the ice in his Znojmo league. If he wants to play hockey in Znojmo, he can come to me and make me an offer, I have no problem with that. If she is interesting, we will certainly make an appointment. But that never happened and I’m sure it never will. Of course, the club will not get it for free. With these circumstances in mind, we took steps in parallel with all this happening so that at least the second league was here.
The city management delayed its statement for a long time, and finally expressed its support for you. What are the relations with the town hall?
We have agreed to cooperate for the next two years, until the end of the election period of the current town hall. I have to say that I have experienced various city leadership positions before, but I have never experienced what I have now. Some people in the ruling coalition are literally acting like unguided missiles. Mrs. Šalomonová came to the A-team match only once, saying that she was going to see how we are eating up the city’s money here. She assumed the role of a kind of holy inquisition whose task is to eliminate everything that works. Mr. Svoboda was certainly an excellent swimmer, but I don’t know if he is competent to manage the Znojmo Thermal Company and at the same time be the “Minister of Sports” and other branches of our city. Here he dismisses the director of Znojemská beseda, here he divides the occupancy of the ice at the winter stadium, here the spaces at the swimming stadium… According to him, even the repair of Pražská Street is the work of the city, while the road belongs to the state. I could mention many more similar cases.
So what is the club’s vision for the future? Where does he want to aspire?
Above all, we don’t want to rely on any miracle investors who appear out of nowhere and disappear again. We definitely want to play in a higher competition than the second league. This means either the first league or a foreign competition. However, it must be remembered that in a city the size of Znojmo, you cannot do professional sports without the support of the town hall. To a large extent, it depends on her how she approaches it.
