Kia ora koutou katoa e te whānau Aotearoa Handball
Middle of the year already, so time for some admin!
First up, National Club Champs. These are being held at Wellington’s fabulous ASB Centre 8-11 September. Yes, that’s right, we are scheduled to start on the Thursday and go through to Sunday afternoon. Our thinking is that in the ideal world you need at least four days to run an event of the highest quality and manage player welfare. We also figured a four day event would make it a more enticing proposition for Clubs from outside Aotearoa. Unfortunately we do not live in an ideal world, and some of our stakeholders have expressed concern about needing to take an extra day’s leave to attend.
To cater for everyone, here's how it will work. Any Clubs based outside Wellington will NOT be scheduled to play a game on the Thursday UNLESS they request that. Please just plan on needing to be ready to jump into action from 9am on the Friday. Wellington-based Clubs – please plan on the possibility of needing to fit in a game on the Thursday afternoon. If we can get a Club or two from Australia arriving for the Thursday and their players are up for it, we may even try to run a Trans-Tasman selection clash to close out the day. All depends on the number of teams who register to take part, so the sooner we can hear from Clubs the better so we can firm up the schedule – let me know at president@handball.org.nz. Registrations close 15 August.
Big shout out to Wellington City Council for providing us with a sizeable wedge of cash to support the Club Champs happen in Welly. Thanks to that funding, we are able to keep team registration fees down at $400 each, with NZHF funding any remaining shortfall. COVID-19 has caused the event to be cancelled for the past two years: third times a charm.
In the shorter term we have the Auckland Under 20 Open coming up. Latest intel we have is that there were insufficient female teams to make a women’s draw a goer, but the youth men are all go. Really looking forward to seeing the next generation of New Zealand handball show their stuff, with an eye on selection for the Oceania IHF Trophy qualifiers at the end of the year.
Looking further ahead, we have the Regional Champs at Christchurch’s Pioneer Stadium at the start of October to round out adult indoor handball for the year.
In between Club and Regional Champs we have everyone’s annual highlight – the NZHF AGM. We are going to run it virtually again this year, pencilled in for 7pm on Sunday 25 September. I hope you are all as excited about it as I am. There will be three spots on the NZHF Exec up for grabs, so get in touch if you think you have something to contribute to the running of our great game, and are prepared to do a bit of heavy lifting. More details to follow.
Final piece of admin – player registration,. The new system is all up and running, so every player taking part in a competitive handball game should now be registered with us. If in doubt, liaise with your Club or contact membership@handball.org.nz.
Last – the Beach Handball Champs in Crete kick off on 21 June. You can access livestreams of all games on the NZHF Supporters Group Facebook page. All the best to Tim, Jimmy and the rest of the Kiwi team carrying the hopes of the nation on their shoulders. We’ll report on how they got on there and on the European Beach circuit and at the World Games in Alabama that follow in next month’s update.
David Ireland
President, New Zealand Handball Federation