Kia ora koutou, New Zealand Handball supporters!
Thanks to all those who tuned in to our first ever virtual AGM on 11 September. A couple of virtual mishaps, but great to have such a good turnout and participation from our voting members.
Draft minutes have been circulated to all member clubs, life members and Regional Associations, and will be put to next year’s AGM for formal approval. Please get in touch if you would like to see the draft meantime.
The Key governance development from the AGM was the election of a new Executive Committee, with myself, Tim Rayner, and Willy Silcock returned to office where we have been joined by new Exec member Maddie Stephen. Thanks to our members for supporting our nominations. For the first time each member has been elected for a two year term in line with May’s SGM constitutional changes, subject to rotational requirements. We have now had our first post-AGM Exec meeting, where we were joined by our Life Members’ nominee to the Exec, Frank Stoltenberg. I am pleased to confirm that our office bearers and portfolio holders for the year ahead are as follows:
President – David
Secretary-General – Frank
Treasurer – Willy
Complaints & Integrity – Frank
High Performance & Club Development – Tim
Women’s Handball & Youth – Maddie
Beach & Tournaments – Willy
Policies & Partnerships – David
Media – Jun Tanlayco (outside Exec)
Membership – Daniel Triebsch (outside Exec)
Thanks again to our retiring Exec members Sarah Malledant, Gaston Fuso and Daniel Triebsch – albeit with Daniel continuing on to support the Exec as our membership registrar. While we have identified particular portfolio to make all the good handball stuff happen. We will aim to coordinate a stakeholders’ meeting in October to flesh out how we see that playing out.
Sadly, our first action as the new Exec was to cancel the Regional Tournament that had been scheduled for Christchurch on 9-10 October. We had held out as long as we could, but with no prospect of Auckland being able to attend it wouldn’t have been a true national event, and at Level 2 much of the benefit of running a tournament are lost. That means the last chance we have to put on a signature event falls to the rescheduled Bite Nite at the Ashburton Events Centre on 6 November when the Men’s National Training Squad will take on a Canterbury selection. Fingers crossed that one will actually go ahead – and that our representatives from Tamaki Makaurau will be released in time to be able to join us.
Congrats to Thomas Schmider for the winning handball design in our pre-AGM poll – you may have seen that appear on the bottom of the livestreams of the Wellington League. We have separately created a design for some NZHF face masks that have been ordered and will be available in October – so keep an eye out for your opportunity to order those. Huge thanks to Willy and Jun for their efforts in making that one happen.
Looking ahead, I am delighted to announce that we have just been allocated grant funding from the WCC Sports Event Partnership Fund to help cover the costs of hosting next year’s club champs in Wellington. We’d applied for the funding to help with this year’s event, but when that was cancelled WCC kindly agreed to switch the grant to next year. Super exciting to have secured a chunk of cash this far out, which means we can plan ahead with confidence. Big thanks to outgoing NZHF Treasurer Sarah Malledant who put in the hard yards on the application – and to WCC for supporting New Zealand Handball!
And now for some international handball news with a Kiwi flavour. The IHF Super Globe 2021 (Handball’s Club World Cup) kicks off in Jeddah in Saudi Arabia on 5 October. As we post this message, NZ rep Luke Ireland has just arrived in Saudi to take his place in the Sydney Uni Team. It’s a composite team whose players were invited to represent the Oceania Continental Handball Federation by the IHF, ensuring the event features teams from every continent, with Luke the only player actually travelling from our region. More info on the Sydney Uni Team and the event can be found here - https://www.ihf.info/media-center/news/make-shift-team-trying-improve-australian-handball. Our Oceania team open the event with a quarterfinal qualifier against German super power club SC Magdeburg at 4.30 pm local time on the 5th (at present they are ten hours behind NZ). We hope to post a link to that on the NZHF Facebook page, along with the other games. With the Wellington League final weekend being livestreamed this Sunday (as always, huge thanks to Jun for bringing handball into our homes), it’s a big week of Handball coming up. While it’s not quite the same as playing for those stuck in lockdown limbo in the Auckland Region, at least you will have a chance to get your fix of competitive handball action from the (perhaps all too familiar for some) comfort of home!
Meantime, closer to home it’s all not doom and gloom with the 2021-22 beach handball programme kicking off on 9 October in Christchurch with a regional camp, in place of indoor regionals. Willy has pulled together another quality programme for the summer ahead, so get amongst it if you can.
All the best
David Ireland
President, New Zealand Handball Federation