Kia ora koutou, New Zealand Handball whānau!
Thanks to all those who tuned in to the AGM on 25 September. Great to have such a good turnout and participation from our voting members.
Draft minutes have been posted on the website https://handball.org.nz/annual-general-meetings-agm and will be put to next year’s AGM for formal approval. You can also find the annual report covering the period between AGMs and the financial statements for the latest financial year in the same section of the website. Please get in touch if you have any queries.
The Key governance development from the AGM was the upgrade to Executive Committee, with Rowan Moloughney elected to join Tim Rayner, Willy Silcock, and Maddie Stephen as the continuing Executive Committee members and me re-elected for a further two year term. We have now had our first post-AGM Executive Committee meeting, where the incumbent Life Members’ appointee on the Exec, Frank Stoltenberg confirmed his availability to continue and he was duly re-appointed by the Life Members as their rep. I am pleased to confirm that our office bearers and portfolio holders for the year ahead are as follows:
President – David
Secretary-General – Rowan
Treasurer – Willy
Complaints & Integrity – David
High Performance – Tim
Women’s Handball – Maddie
Youth Handball – Frank
Beach Handball – Willy
Tournaments – Rowan
Policies & Partnerships – David
Media – Jun Tanlayco (outside Exec)
Membership – Daniel Triebsch (outside Exec)
Referee Development – Antoine Desnos (outside Exec)
While we have identified particular portfolios of interest for each Exec member, please bear in mind that we are primarily an oversight and governance body: the onus continues to be on our Clubs and Regional Associations to make all the good handball stuff happen. A Regional Associations and Club stakeholders’ meeting has been scheduled for 19 October to flesh out how we see the year ahead playing out, with a focus on developing youth and women’s handball and coordinating the schedule.
The other big event that too place since my last update was the Regional Champs held in Christchurch on October 1 and 2. Hats off to the Canterbury Handball organizing committee who put on a fantastic tournament at Pioneer Stadium, despite some challenges with numbers, with one of the most tightly contested Championships I can recall seeing and some top quality handball on display. Congratulations to the Otago Men for taking out the honours for their first ever win at this event, and to the Canterbury A Women’s team. A big thank you to all those that made the effort to get to this pinnacle event to conclude the indoor season.
The focus now moves to the Men’s Youth and Junior teams set to compete in the IHF Trophy Oceania qualifiers in Rarotonga, with the tournament now confirmed to commence on 3 December. Congratulations to the members of the two squads selected to represent New Zealand at this important event, with the winner of each age division going on to represent Oceania at the Intercontinental Championships next year. We had some great depth in the talent pool competing for spots in the squads. That’s really encouraging for the future, although it meant the selectors had their work cut out and some promising young players missed out on a spot. Hopefully their time will come, and meantime we can be confident we have a couple of very competitive teams to contest the Trophy. To follow the boys campaigns and keep up to date with their prep towards IHF Trophy follow
https://www.facebook.com/nzyouthhandball
We also have the 2022-23 beach handball programme kicking off this month, and it is great to see a beach league starting up in Wellington to take advantage of the new sand court that opened in autumn. It is an exciting summer ahead, with the beach high performance programme cranking up another notch as we eye another Oceania qualifiers at the end of summer with the prize this time being a spot at the World Beach games in Bali next August. Keep an eye out for further updates as we look to host those qualifiers and put on a show for the rest of the handball world to see.
Ngā mihi
David Ireland
President, New Zealand Handball Federation