Roller hockey (quad)

Roller hockey (in British English), rink hockey (in American English) or quad hockey is a team sport that enjoys significant popularity in a number of Latin countries.

Two five-man teams (four skaters and one goalkeeper) try to drive the ball with their sticks into the opponents' goal. The ball can only be put in motion by a stick. The game has two 25-minute halves (for adults), with the clock stopping when the ball becomes dead. Each team has a one-minute timeout in each half. Each team has a minimum of six players (a backup goalie is required) and a maximum of ten.

Players use quad skates, whereas inline skates are used in inline hockey. Excessive contact between players is forbidden in rink hockey, unlike inline hockey.

Roller Hockey was a demonstration rollersport in the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona. There have been 42 editions of the FIRS Roller Hockey World Cup, with Latin countries dominating the sport since the 1940s: Spain (16 World titles), Portugal (15 World titles), Argentina (5 World titles) and Italy (4 World titles). Other countries, such as France, Brazil, Germany, Switzerland, Andorra and England are regular international competitors, but rarely overcome the traditional powers.

UEFA Euro 2016

The 2016 UEFA European Championship, commonly referred to as UEFA Euro 2016 or simply Euro 2016, will be the 15th edition of the UEFA European Championship, the quadrennial international men's football championship of Europe organized by UEFA. It is scheduled to be held in France from 10 June to 10 July 2016.Spain are two-time defending champions.

For the first time, the European Championship final tournament will be contested by 24 teams, having been expanded from the 16-team format used since 1996. Under this new format, the finalists will contest a group stage consisting of six groups of four teams, followed by a knockout stage including three rounds and the final. 19 teams (the top two from each of the nine qualifying groups and the best third-placed team) joined France who qualified automatically as hosts; a series of two-legged play-off ties between the remaining third-placed teams in November 2015 decided the last four spots at the final tournament.

France was chosen as the host nation on 28 May 2010, after a bidding process in which they beat Italy and Turkey for the right to host the 2016 finals. The matches will be played in ten stadia in ten cities: Bordeaux, Lens, Lille, Lyon, Marseille, Nice, Paris, Saint-Denis, Saint-Étienne, and Toulouse. It will be the third time that France hosts the tournament, after the inaugural tournament in 1960 and the 1984 finals. The French team have won the European Championship twice: in 1984 and 2000.

Hockey

Hockey is a family of sports in which two teams play against each other by trying to maneuver a ball or a puck into the opponent's goal using a hockey stick. In many areas, one sport (typically field hockey or ice hockey) is generally referred to simply as hockey.

Etymology

The first recorded use of the word hockey is in the 1773 book Juvenile Sports and Pastimes, to Which Are Prefixed, Memoirs of the Author: Including a New Mode of Infant Education by Richard Johnson (Pseud. Master Michel Angelo), whose chapter XI was titled "New Improvements on the Game of Hockey". The belief that hockey was mentioned in a 1363 proclamation by King Edward III of England is based on modern translations of the proclamation, which was originally in Latin and explicitly forbade the games "Pilam Manualem, Pedivam, & Bacularem: & ad Canibucam & Gallorum Pugnam". The English historian and biographer John Strype did not use the word "hockey" when he translated the proclamation in 1720.

The word hockey itself is of unknown origin. One explanation is that it is a derivative of hoquet, a Middle French word for a shepherd's stave. The curved, or "hooked" ends of the sticks used for hockey would indeed have resembled these staves. Another explanation is that the cork bungs that replaced wooden balls in the 18th century came from barrels containing "hock" ale, also called "hocky".

FA Cup Final

The FA Cup Final, commonly referred to in England as just the Cup Final, is the last match in the Football Association Challenge Cup. With an official attendance of 89,826 at the 2007 FA Cup Final, it is the fourth best attended domestic club championship event in the world and the second most attended domestic football event. It is the culmination of a knockout competition among clubs belonging to The Football Association in England, although Scottish and Irish teams competed in the early years and Welsh teams regularly compete, with Cardiff City winning the Cup in 1927 and reaching the final in 2008.

The latest FA Cup Final was the final of the 2014-2015 Season which was held on 30 May 2015 at Wembley Stadium and played between Arsenal and Aston Villa with Arsenal winning 4-0 to retain the trophy after their win against Hull City in the previous final.

History

Early FA Cup Finals were held mainly in London at venues including Kennington Oval between 1874 and 1892 and Crystal Palace between 1895 and 1914. In the period from 1923 until 2000, the final was held at Wembley Stadium, English football's national stadium. From 2001–2005, the final was moved to Millennium Stadium in Cardiff, during the rebuilding of Wembley Stadium. Millennium Stadium was used again in 2006 due to construction delays in opening the new Wembley Stadium.

Óquei Clube de Barcelos

Hóquei Clube de Barcelos is a rink hockey team from Barcelos, Portugal. It is one of the most successful rink hockey teams in Portugal and Europe. It is known and referred to as "Hóquei de Barcelos", "OCB", "OC Barcelos", or just "Barcelos".

Foundation

The idea of creating a rink-hockey team was born in 1946 by a group of boys in Barcelos. Although the documentation shows that the team was founded on 22 December 1947, 1 January 1948 is considered the official foundation date of the club. The founders of the team were the Barcelos-born cousins Cândido Augusto Sousa Cunha and Simplício Cândido Monteiro de Sousa. The first game of the team was in 1948 in the ring of Pessegal against the Clube dos Ourives (Goldsmiths' Club), and OC Barcelos won by 5-2. In the first years, the hockey that was played was a mix of Field Hockey and Rink Hockey, because although the rules were similar to Rink Hockey, they didn't use skates. Rink hockey as it is played began in the club only in 1952.