IFAF issues statement regarding European Championship games involving Russia

The International Federation of American Football has issued a statement regarding the European Championship qualifying games involving Team Russia.

The Russian national team was scheduled to play in a group with Great Britain and Italy this fall.

Dear nations,

This Autumn, as part of the 2022 schedule of fixtures in the IFAF European Championship (M-Tackle), the following 3 nations were due to play each other either at home or away: Great Britain, Italy, and Russia.

On Thursday 24th February, the Russian military became actively engaged in Ukraine.  Following this engagement, various members of the international community sought to impose sanctions on Russia in response. These sanctions covered a breadth of inter-related areas: economic, transport, energy, defense, raw material, alongside diplomatic measures.  Russia has also taken steps to respond to various members of the international community. The collective impact of these measures has made it increasingly difficult for any of our member federations to effectively plan for the fixtures involving the national team of Russia, including the national federation of Russia.

As a consequence, IFAF has adopted the following position with regard to the following fixtures: Russia v Italy; Great Britain v Russia

The current political situation in response to the events on and since February 24th is an event of force majeure, which is beyond the control of the national federations of Great Britain, Italy and Russia [the ‘Parties’], which the Parties could not have reasonably provided against before entering into the tournament, which could not reasonably have been avoided or overcome, and which is not attributable to any of the Parties. Under these circumstances, IFAF finds that the cumulative effects of the sanctions prevents the Parties from performing all or part of their agreed obligations in regard to the specified fixtures. As a result, IFAF releases each federation from further performance of the obligations concerned in these scheduled fixtures.

In terms of the current competition, IFAF will adopt the following position. The two fixtures will not be recorded as official fixtures and as such will not appear on any official record of the competing nations. They will not contribute to the standings in the Group. The game scheduled between Italy and Great Britain will still take place and will determine the nation which comes top of the Group. No nation shall be relegated from the Group or lose equivalent status should IFAF have to reconfigure the Group for further iterations of the tournament.

Any appeal to the above decision needs to be lodged to [email protected]