President's Update for March 2023

Kia ora koutou, Aotearoa Handball Whānau!

March already, and time for a quick update as another summer of beach handball draws to a close and indoor training starts to crank up around the country.

First up it’s youth handball. Fantastic to see the latest initiative to grow our secondary school playing base throw off last month, with the successful launch of the Porirua Secondary Schools League. Exciting to see some fresh new talent experience the fun of handball. Big shout out to Porirua Handball and Ben Potaka for making that happen.

At the same time, our established programmes for supporting youth handball in Auckland, Christchurch and Dunedin continue, with some great mahi being put in by our wonderful volunteers around the country to nurture our emerging talent. We also continue to enjoy great support from our key strategic partner The Goethe Institut supplying kit for Das Kiwi Handball Projekt and other initiatives at the intermediate school level, with some exciting plans afoot in that space. If you have connections with a primary or intermediate school that you think would be interested in experiencing some fun handball to start the kids on a lifetime handball journey, please get in touch.

At the high performance end of our youth programme, our Men’s Under 19 Team’s preparations for the 2023 Men’s U19 World Champs are well underway. With the tournament scheduled to take place in Croatia in August it’s a massive commitment from all those involved, but they are up for the task and early signs are encouraging. With around $12k per player needed to get them there, a major fundraising campaign is under way – https://nzyouthhandball.raisely.com. If you have connections with any organisations that might be interested in sponsoring the team, please reach out to youth@handball.org.nz – we’d love to hear from you.

On the beach front, we have had another well-attended series in Christchurch over the New Zealand version of summer. Congrats to the Northern men and the Southern Women for taking out the best of three North-South clashes, and to the Parrots (Men) and Otago Toroa (Women) for taking out the Beach Club Champs. Eyes now turn to the international front, where the Men’s and Women’s Teams will have their jobs cut out for them as they compete at Coolangatta over ANZAC Weekend in the Oceania qualifiers for the World Beach Games and next year’s World Champs. Another fundraising campaign is underway to help with that, so once again keep an eye out for opportunities to support your national teams go out and do it for New Zealand.

Looking ahead to the indoor season, the major tournaments schedule for the year is now all locked and loaded, and first up it’s everyone’s favourite, the Queenstown Social Tournament on 1-2 April. See 2023 National Tournaments for the schedule. As a nearly heads up, National Club Champs will be held at Wellington’s fabulous renamed Ākau Tangi Sports Centre on 8-10 September – as with last year, it’s a full three day event. We are scheduled to throw off from 9am on the opening Friday of the tournament, with finals likely to be mid-late afternoon on the 10th. This year we have booked for games to take place on the Friday evening so we can allow teams a bit more rest time between games. If you are planning on travelling to Wellington from out of town, please factor in that timing. And we have already had interest in attending expressed from an Australian Club, so looking forward to some international competition on our home turf – it’s been a while!

Last for this update, the NZHF Exec is working through the outputs from last December’s strategy session – thanks again to all those Club and Regional Association reps who took part in that. It’s clear we have some challenges ahead, but encouraging to have depth in our volunteer base across the country to take on those challenges.  Our plan is to share the key updates to NZHF’s strategy next month, along with confirmation of the subs and affiliation fees for the current year. I’m sure you are all hanging out for that.

Yours in handball

David Ireland

President, New Zealand Handball Federation

President's Update - December 2022

Meri Kirihimete, Aotearoa handball whānau

Hard to believe we are nearly at the end of another year – and what an action-packed year it has been for New Zealand Handball!

First up, congratulations to our men’s junior and youth team’s for a fantastic showing at the IHF Trophy Oceania qualifiers held in the Cook Islands at the start of December. While the boys weren’t able to bring home the silverware they had hoped for, they still posted some very creditable results and can hold their heads high with our U18 youth team finishing 2nd, coming agonisingly close to top place with a one goal loss to winners Tahiti, and the U20 juniors finishing 3rd, also coming agonisingly close to finishing one place better with a one goal loss to New Caledonia. Many thanks and congratulations to Cook Islands Handball for hosting the tournament. The result for the U18 Team was good enough to secure them a spot at the 2023 IHF Men’s Youth World Championships to be held in Croatia, so possibly more action in store for them next year.

We wish Tahiti (Youth) and Australia (Juniors) all the best as they go on to represent Oceania at the intercontinental phase of the IHF Trophy next year.

The future of New Zealand Men’s handball is looking bright with the way our boys performed in the Cooks. Now that they have had a taste of success on the international stage, we hope all the members of both squads have a long handball career ahead of them, and will share their experiences to inspire their peers to get amongst it. Eyes now turn to our youth and junior women’s teams to prepare for the equivalent Oceania qualifiers next year, date and venue yet to be confirmed. Look out for more communications and expressions of interests to get involved in that in the New Year.

Sticking with the international theme, the Men’s Handball World Championships will be held in Poland and Sweden in January. While New Zealand didn’t quite make the cut to take part, I will be attending the finals weekend in my capacity as NZHF President to wave the flag for New Zealand Handball, so look out for me in the stands. For those of you having a flutter on that international event, please do so at TAB NZ. There is a surprising level of betting placed on handball games from New Zealand, and an even more surprising proportion of that is placed with overseas betting agencies. While NZHF does not wish to encourage gambling, we do benefit financially from handball revenue generated by TAB NZ, for which we are extremely grateful and is how we get to fund our development grants programme. Any bet placed on handball that is not made through the TAB in New Zealand represents money lost to growing the sport here.

On the subject of our development grant programme, a process plea for those looking for funding from us. We have had a few applications come through of late that relate to expenses that have already been incurred and initiatives implemented. While we encourage initiatives aimed at developing and promoting the sport and its players, and are committed to funding initiatives that meet our fairly wide criteria, we won’t usually fund things retrospectively. So for our Clubs and Regional Associations, if you have an idea for something that will develop handball, and it will cost some cash to make it happen, please talk to us about how we can help before you get too far down the track. That way we can help make sure we can maximise the impact of the funding we provide, and have opportunity  to assist with whatever you have in mind. Contact Willy at treasurer@handball.org.nz if you want further information.

Looking back on the year that has been, it is encouraging to have been able to roll out a relatively full programme in 2022 after a couple of years of frustration, with all the major domestic tournaments ticked off: Queenstown in April, Auckland Open in May, the Wellington League from June to September, Auckland’s youth tournament in August, Club Champs in Wellington in September and Regionals in Christchurch in October, on top of the School leagues in Dunedin and lots of other handball being organised throughout the regions and green shoots developing in Bay of Plenty and Wanaka. And of course, the wildly successful beach programme saw our Men and Women compete on the Gold Coast over ANZAC weekend and the Men go on to the Beach World Champs in Crete and World Games in Alabama with a cheeky round of the European Beach circuit in France in between. We were also able to kick off our inaugural referees training course, giving us something to build on as we look to improve the quality of our play. The year ahead is shaping up to be just as big, with hopefully the days of COVID-19 disruptions consigned to the history books meaning we get a clear run at an uninterrupted programme in 2023.

Talking of planning for the year ahead, we had a well-attended region-wide strategy meet on 11 December, thanks to Billie from Spartanz HC for facilitating that. There are a few initiatives and strategies that will flow from that session aimed at ensuring Handball in New Zealand is able to move forward on an even better organised basis, so thanks to all who took part, both in terms of participation in the session and in anticipation of you helping to follow that through in 2023.

Last, a huge shout out to all our wonderful handball community for all you have done over the year to make handball Aotearoa as good as it has been. The year has not been without its challenges, but we continue to benefit from a fantastic cohort of hard-working volunteers throughout the country. Thanks for all that you do – and for all that you will continue to do!

Safe travels, and best wishes for the holiday season, whatever it may mean for you

David Ireland

President, New Zealand Handball Federation