RANKA YEARBOOK 1995 - The International Go Federation

Go Around the WorldAustraliaThe future of go in Australia brightensevery year. Fuelled by immigration fromChina, Hong Kong, Korea, and Japan, aswell as natural growth within the diverselymulticultural Australian community, thenumber of go players is steadily increasing.And so is the level of talent. We must begaining at least two or three players a yearover 5-dan and we now have five playershovering slightly above 7-dan.All of this is accelerating the growth ofour lower dans and resulting in a large cropof kyu players about to invade the danranks. Nonetheless, we are a small community,probably 3,500 players in total,spread over seven major cities, all of whichare hundreds of kilometres apart. So thechances for people from all over the countryto get together are limited. This makes theNational Championships ever moreimportant. It's one of the few times eachyear that we are able to meet people fromthe other cities and catch up with all thenews, facts, and fictions.As to be expected, this year's Nationalsattracted the strongest field we've ever had.Lower dans in Australia once had a chanceto get to Japan, but those days are over. Thebenefit of having strong players in ourcommunity far outweighs that once slimchance. We're even getting to believe that,within the next five years, Australia maywell have a major chance in the WAGC.This year the Nationals hosted KonagaiMasaru 6-dan of the Nihon Ki-in. As a preliminaryto the Championships, Mr. Konagailed a three-day training camp at a popularresort area near Melbourne. This was thefirst of its kind and with 23 attendees thecamp was fully booked. Next year we willhave to arrange a far larger facility. Thefeeling for this beautiful game that Mr.Konagai imparted to us all was beyond description.One phrase he used is now part ofour go lore: 'The noodles at lunch tastedgood, perhaps because I felt I was leading.'Mr. Yang 9-dan from Korea also flew outto observe the Nationals. Mr. Yang isamongst the strongest players in Korea andParticipants in the Phillip Island training camp- 47 -