Vladimír Vůjtek

"After 1970, the normalisation started and there were all sorts of dubious ideas. In about 1973, the Central Committee of the Czechoslovak Union of Physical Education issued a decree that required that in every team, there be two players chosen, who would become candidates of the Communist party and they would be preparing for a some sort of career in the Party. All the first league teams were afflicted. Should they not fulfil this, they would lose funding. It was pretty unpleasant for us. As young guys, we had entirely different interests than politics. It hit us hard. It was meticulously followed and controlled. The team officials would have problems if they did not meet this quota. Every team thus had to designate two candidates for Party membership every year."

“There were matches when it snowed or rained. It was difficult to play, even more to finish a game, some of the matches were not finished. I remember how we played with Liptovský Mikuláš and it started to snow. We scored three quick goals, the score was 3 : 0 and we wanted to play the whole match. It snowed so much that every five minutes, we shoveled the snow towards the boards and then it was thrown on the other side. And then we played for another five minutes and then again. After the first third, it was impossible to continue. The match was cancelled and the rest was played some three weeks later. Some other time, it rained, there was water on the ice, we were all wet. We played as long as we could. Back then when I played in Slovakia, there were eight teams and only four of them had covered stadium. There were two in Bratislava, one in Banská Bystrica and one in Žilina. Nobody else had one.“

“At the other end of the village, we built a dam across the stream. It was hard work, we were nine or ten and we needed to move piles of soil to build the dam. But then, we could play every day. We did not play six or eight months as today's children do in the teams. We played for two and half months when it was cold but we used to meet right after classes and played three or four hours a day. During holidays or weekends, we were there in the morning and in the afternoon so we might spend even eight hours on ice. Compared to today's young players who practice one hour a day, we were likely better off. There were not many of us, ten boys of various ages. The who came played. We played two against two or three against three. It meant that we spent a lot of time with the puck and we had to invent all sorts of tricks and passes. We greatly enjoyed it and on this creek, I grew to be a hockey player.”