President's Update - July 2021

Happy International Handball Week!

I am penning this after just participating in a Zoom meeting with representatives from the international handball community from around the world as we celebrate 75 years of the IHF. It’s quite something for little ol’ New Zealand with our tiny handball community to experience the global behemoth that is the IHF in action! Good news for our youth players, the IHF Challenge Trophy will be recommencing just as soon as COVID allows, with a commitment to resume the usual programme.

For those who haven’t seen it, the link below takes you to our youth-focused contribution to the 75th anniversary celebration that was shared with the IHF at the start of the week – thanks to our Regions who provided the content and to the tireless Jun for collating it all:

My Page

NZ Handball also features in the Asian Handball Federation’s posting to celebrate the week. That’s quite a coup for us, since we are officially part of the Oceania Region and only get to participate in AHF events by invitation. See the video link below (we come into it a minute or so in):

https://www.facebook.com/OfficialAhf/videos/513468559871455

Closer to home, we have had some constructive conversations with Handball Australia to come up with some initiatives to work more closely with them, given the challenges we face getting international competition in a COVID world. And as part of the Oceania Continental Handball Federation, we are hopeful of connecting with our Pasifika neighbours to get some handball action going with them as well as border restrictions hopefully start to open up. Sadly, there’s a fair way to go before we are out of the woods.

Super-excited about the handball programme locked in for the next three months, on top of all the great work going on under the umbrella of the Regional Associations:

Under 19 Regionals in Auckland 28-29 August

  • Wellington Handball Federation’s Club League finals 5 September

  • National Club Champs in Wellington 10-12 September

  • Men’s National Team playing an invitation selection as part of the Ashburton Festival 25 September

  • Youth Handball Camp in Wellington 2-3 October

  • Regional Handball Champs in Christchurch 9-10 October

Of course, there is also a wee sporting competition going on in Tokyo over the next couple of weeks, providing one of the few times when international handball gets to enjoy some coverage on mainstream New Zealand TV. We will post details of when games are happening and where you can get to view them once that is known. 

And if that isn’t enough to get the handball juices flowing, in the midst of all that we have my personal favourite, the NZHF AGM on 11 September. That will be hosted in Wellington, but with online participation possible as a result of the constitutional changes approved in May. More details to follow closer to the time. It’s all go!

On the admin front we are in the final stages of inking a couple of important partner support agreements that I will update you on in next month’s update. We have just taken delivery of a flash set of kit for the Men’s and Women’s National Team that our High Performance representatives will hopefully get a chance to show off on court later in the year, and are awaiting the first supply of handballs funded through our relationship with the TAB. At our last  meeting we also signed off on our Complaints Policy and High Performance Selection Mission Statement & Policy, as well as confirmed our earlier update to the Anti-Match Fixing & Sports Betting Policy. You can find all these, along with the updated constitution and strategic plan for NZHF, at www.handball.org.nz

As always, if you have any feedback or handball initiatives to share, please get in touch. We’d love to hear from you.

David Ireland

President, New Zealand Handball Federation

Beach Handball - 2021 Off Season Update

Kia ora Koutou Katoa

Happy International Handball week to all our members. Today is the theme of beach handball and I want to take this small window in the busy indoor schedule to give you a taster of the upcoming Beach Handball season. The NZHF Beach Handball stakeholders have met and discussed how to best move forward and we wish to share what was decided.

Last year our high performance programme was left as an open programme. To increase continuity and consistency across the programme the squad named at the end of the previous season shall be the only players with a standing invite to High Performance Camps (See this link). Other players may be invited to the camps at the discretion of the Men’s and Women’s Beach Handball coaches.

We believe that the blueprint set out last year was a great building block and our year will be formatted in a similar fashion. While the below image shows an indicative timeline for the current year given the current global situation we understand the need to be agile and will set by the end of August when we have a clearer picture of the international situation.

Timeline.png

This timeline will help prepare our teams for potential international events later in the season, including the Australian Beach Champs which we are expecting in March. We will try avoid our own programme clashing with international events. While we are cautiously optimistic we will be attending these events, we understand the need to provide a high level of competition in our own back yard to keep pushing our players to be better tomorrow.

Looking forward to seeing you all out on the sand soon,

Ngā Mihi Nui,

Willy Silcock

NZHF Executive Board Member (Beach Handball Portfolio)­

beach@handball.org.nz

President's Update - June 2021

Kia ora Koutou, New Zealand Handball community

The depths of winter are now well and truly upon us, but the indoor handball calendar has plenty in it to keep you all warm!

The Tokyo Olympics are now just a month away, Covid outbreaks permitting. This is the one time every four years (ignoring last year’s postponement) when the New Zealand public get to see quality internationals handball (well, any sort of handball, when it comes down to it!) on mainstream TV. We are expecting a corresponding surge in interest in handball, and we are developing strategies to capitalise on that. You can all play your part by encouraging all your contacts to try and catch that action as part of the Olympics coverage. New Zealand might not be competing this time around, but maybe one day...

Closer to home, we had a very successful one-day Junior Cup tournament in Wellington at the end of May. With a wealth of players having international experience on board, the Wellington hosts took out the title, but there’s a host of emerging talent from around the country that suggests they may have their work cut out to retain the pre-season Cup next year. Unfortunately, there wasn’t enough interest expressed this time round to run a women’s junior tournament, but hopefully, that will happen next time.

And the next opportunity for the juniors is now not far away, with Auckland Handball set to host the junior regionals on 28-29 August. At this stage, we are looking at Men’s and Women’s U18 and U21 divisions (age eligibility determined as at 1 January 2021), provided we get enough numbers, with further details to come. The onus is on our Regional Associations to make this happen, but we encourage anyone interested in taking part to register that interest with their local regional body. Big thanks to Auckland Handball for making this possible.

On the senior side of things, we have an exciting end of season programme lined up for you. Hot on the heels of the Wellington Handball Federation’s Club League final at the start of September, we have the National Club Champs in Wellington 10-12 September. We have had interest from a couple of clubs wanting to come over from Australia, and we are hoping to be able to host an international invitation event on the Friday night of the tournament – confirmation to follow. Meantime, all Clubs thinking of taking part, please ensure you will be able to field a team bright and early on the Friday morning, with the Friday set as a full day of competition over multiple courts to fit everything in – with the possibility of a couple of the Wellington teams needing to compete on the Thursday evening. We then have the Regional Champs in Christchurch 9-10 October to round out the domestic calendar before we turn our sights back on Beach.

In between the Club and Regional Champs, the Men’s National Training Squad have secured a showcase event, with the Men’s Team set to play a Barbarian’s selection in an Exhibition Game at the Ashburton Events Centre on the evening of Saturday 25 September, as part of the Ashburton Festival. It should be a great event, with the NTS holding a training camp in Ashburton around that event – it’s great to be able to show our support for a community that has had a hell of a time of it over the past month. We encourage all our handball community to get along to Ashburton that weekend to show your support and watch what should be a great game of handball on the Saturday night.

On the governance front, it was great to get the changes to the NZHF constitution through at the SGM held in Wellington end of May. Thanks to all the Club reps for making it along. We now have a more robust framework to support New Zealand Handball kicking on to the next level, with a set of rules that will hopefully see us through the rest of the decade.  Included in the changes is a specific role for the life members to play, a more robust disciplinary and complaints process, and formal recognition of Regional Associations in the organisation’s framework. We have reached out to the Regional Associations to let them know what it means for them – with successes over the past few months enabling us to launch a fund to support regional handball development initiatives. Exciting times.

 

Last, a special nod to our tireless Media Officer Jun and the fantastic work he has been doing getting livestream feeds of our handball games up and running. We are incredibly fortunate to have him volunteer his time and expertise so generously. What we ask of the handball community in return is that you all do your bit to help out – whether it is manning a camera, helping with the set up and pack down, or helping with replays and other logistics. Jun can’t always be there, and we desperately need some more volunteers to step up and get trained on what needs to be done.

Nga mihi

David Ireland
President, New Zealand Handball Federation

President's Update - May 2021

Dear NZ Handball Community

The 2021 Indoor Handball season is upon us!

Following last month’s successful completion of the Queenstown Handball Tournament, Vic Uni’s Hallo Handball, and the Southern Shield, we were treated to the first major national event on the calendar, the Auckland Handball Open Champs hosted by Auckland Region Handball on 15 & 16 May at the AUT Stadium. Congratulations to the Auckland teams taking out both the Women’s round-robin title, and the hotly contested final of the Men’s division against Wellington.  Congratulations also to Alex, Thomas, Qassim, Pepe, Katharina and the rest of the Auckland Region Handball organising committee for making the event such a well-run success. It was really encouraging for the state of New Zealand Handball to see so many younger players coming through (without wishing to downplay the presence of a smattering of veteran players taking part!), and there was some great quality handball on display – as well as some early-season rustiness! Having such a great turnout of players and supporters at the social event at O’Hagans half way through the tournament was testament to the wonderful collegiality our close-knit sport enjoys, so a great start to the indoor programme all round.

On 30 May we have the NZHF Junior Cup for the Under 23 male cohort, being run by NZHF at Wellington’s ASB Centre. With teams from Otago, Canterbury and Auckland plus two from Wellington, the event will provide another opportunity for our emerging talent from around the country to showcase their wares. Catch the action from 8am through to prizegiving at 3pm on the 30th.

At noon on the 30th there will be a brief pause in the Junior Cup programme for NZHF to hold an SGM to consider a proposed replacement constitution. There are some important updates proposed for the governing framework of our organisation that we hope will see us through the next decade or so, as we look to underpin our standing as a Sport NZ recognised National Sports Organisation. A notice of meeting has been circulated to members and key stakeholders providing details of the meeting and the proposed changes, but please contact the NZHF Secretary at secretary@handball.org.nz if you would like to know more.

On a less positive note we have made the hard decision to decline the Asian Handball Federation’s invitation for us to send a team to the Women’s Championships being held in South Korea in September. With the current state of the Covid pandemic and our own border controls the decision itself was a pretty easy one to make, but it is always disappointing to miss out on a rare opportunity for some international competition. The silver lining to that cloud is that we now have around 30 months for the women to prepare themselves for their next crack at the Asian Champs! We are still hopeful that the men’s team will have opportunity to take part in the next Men’s Asian Handball Champs likely to take place in January 2022. The squad has been putting in some great mahi with that goal in mind, but there are a few ducks that need to line up for us before we can lock that in.

That’s about it for now. At the Auckland Handball Open it was heartening to hear of all the great initiatives going on to grow handball in New Zealand – not just in the sleeping giant that is the Auckland Region, but in Wellington with the resurgence of the VUW Club in particular and all that they are doing (evidenced by them sending three teams to Auckland), Canterbury and Otago. To all the many volunteers putting in the hard yards to add depth and grow our wonderful sport, thank you, and keep up the great work.

All the best

David Ireland

President, New Zealand Handball Federation

President's Update - April 2021

Dear NZ Handball Community

Autumn already, and you can almost smell the aroma of the indoor season just around the corner. In fact, it is even closer than around the corner, kicking off in earnest this weekend with the Queenstown Handball Tournament, followed a couple of weeks later in Wellington by the Hello Handball 2021 event hosted by Victoria University Handball Club. It’s a fantastic lead in to what we hope will be a bumper season of New Zealand indoor handball – thanks to the organisers of those two events for all the effort they have put in to making them happen, and all the best to those taking part.

Speaking of thanks and fantastic events, hats off to Willy Silcock and the team making it all happen at Elmwood Park for a magical beach programme this summer. Congratulations to the North Island Rep Teams for taking out both the Men’s and Women’s Trophies in a hard-fought best of three series. The future of New Zealand beach is looking bright with the depth of talent on display, and we can now just cross our fingers that the planets will align to open up some international beach competition by the end of the year.

The other big news on the Tournament front is that after much debate we have made the call to change the focus of the Auckland regional tournament in May from a high-performance rep team event to an open tournament. The original intention was to kick the season off with a hiss and a roar, with no other openings in the calendar available to hold the Auckland tournament on a weekend other than mid-May. Taking on board feedback received from a number of stakeholders, we have decided to defer the regional rep tournament to much later in the year. This better aligns with the high-performance calendar,  and opening up this pre-season tournament to a wider range of players is also better aligned with the inclusive value we strive to observe.

Keep an eye out for details of the replacement high-performance regional tournament that we hope to be able to confirm in the next update. Meantime, we are looking forward to see as many of the handball class of 2021 from around the country battle it out in Auckland on 15-16 May. Big thanks to Auckland Handball for making this happen.

On the NZHF admin front, two key initiatives to update you on.

First, the proposed changes to the NZHF constitution were circulated last month for feedback before we finalise the final set of changes to put to a SGM before the end of June. If you haven’t already done so, please take the opportunity to have a look, and let us know whether you think we haven’t got any of the changes right or think we have missed something – or let us know if you are happy with what we have come up with!

Second, we made a bit of noise about finally gaining formal recognition by Sport NZ at the end of 2020. One of the opportunities this opened up for us was the ability to team up with the TAB, providing us with a new platform to promote the game of handball to a new set of enthusiasts and further grow the sport. A spin-off from that connection is that we have benefitted from some of the revenue generated from the first couple of months of the arrangement to the tune of a bit over $2,000. That’s more funds available to us to plough back into growing the sport. Exciting times.

That’s it for now. There’s plenty happening, and plenty to look forward to over the next few months as the season swings into top gear. Get into it!

Stay safe

David Ireland
President NZHF

NZHF National Beach Champs - COVID Level 2 Update

Tēnā koutou katoa

The New Zealand Handball Federation Executive met earlier today to discuss the implications of the current national COVID situations with respect to the National Beach Handball Championships. I wanted to share with you the decisions made at the meeting.

Our first discussion was whether or not to carry on with the tournament. Upon discussing options we have decided to CONTINUE with the tournament as scheduled.

With consideration to the level two rule of less than 100 people at any gathering we discussed spectators at the venue. We have decided NOT to allow spectators at the venue. We will however consider fringe cases where spectators have a reason to be at the venue for logistical or compassionate grounds. These spectators will have to go through an approval process. Information on the approval process will be made available as soon as practical. Tournament organisers will be decide if a spectator has legitimate grounds to be at the venue.

We understand that there is risk of community transmission. With respect to that we do have some hard and fast rules when it comes to attendance. We ask you not to attend the tournament if;

  • If you are feeling sick or unwell, regardless of the circumstances.

  • If you are considered a casual contact of any Community Case (i.e. you have been to any of the Current locations of interest listed on the Ministry of Health website)

  • If you have been in contact with someone with is considered a causal contact of any Community Case

The New Zealand Handball Federation understand that in these unprecedented times we require to be nimble with decision making. We will be reassessing this decision informally daily. If there is a change to the National Situation we will meet as early as practical to discuss the implications of this with respect to the National Beach Handball Championships.

The New Zealand Handball Federation is aware that many people would love to watch the tournament we will try our best to make the tournament available through electronic means.

If you have any questions regarding the decisions made or need to discuss your situation please don’t hesitate to contact myself on through my email address below.

To our Auckland community, Kia Kaha, Stay strong we as a community and a nation stand with you and together we can get through this.

Ngā Mihi Nui

Willy Silcock

NZHF Executive Member – Beach Handball Portfolio

beach@handball.org.nz

President's Update February 2021

Half-way through February already, and the handball programme for 2021 is well underway.

First up, we hope you were able to catch some of the action from the recently completed men’s handball world champs live-streamed from Egypt. Some great action and great coverage, with the New Zealand handball community able to have some skin in the games for the first time through our agreement with the TAB. Congratulations to the Danes for making it back to back wins.

Back home, and the programme for the year ahead is taking shape. The first major event on the calendar is the national beach champs in Christchurch at the start of March. The beach programme this summer has been a raging success so far, and the grand finale is shaping up to be a goodie.

Later in March, we have a final beach camp scheduled to conclude the summer beach programme. Heading into January we were still hopeful of some Trans-Tasman beach action, but the border issues and latest covid outbreaks mean that won’t be happening this summer.

On the indoor front, the Queenstown South Island Open is locked in for 10/11 April, the senior regionals are set down for Auckland 15-16 May, the NZ Club champs will be held in Wellington 10-12 September and the junior regionals will be held in October. At the time of writing this, we were still putting the finishing touches on planning a junior high-performance camp for mid-March, with the extent of competitive action dependent on numbers. It’s a shame we can’t promise any international competition for either juniors or seniors at this stage, but we are looking to make the most of our domestic opportunities meantime, and keeping fingers crossed for whatever may open up later in the year.

Last, on the admin front, we are progressing the NZHF constitution update, with a draft replacement constitution to be circulated for consultation in March. It may not be the most exciting part of what’s in store, but getting the constitutional framework right should set up the long term success of the organisation, so we look forward to a good level of engagement in that process. Big thanks to Dentons Kensington Swan for coming to the party with some pro bono support for the drafting work.

All the best

The NZHF Executive Committee

A win for New Zealand Handball off the Court

Handball New Zealand stands to directly benefit from the International Handball Federation Men's World Championship, which got underway this week in Egypt, thanks to a new agreement with TAB NZ.

"European Handball is a growing sport in New Zealand. While we're not competing at the current World Championship, our agreement with the TAB means we have a better chance of making it there in the future" says New Zealand Handball Federation President, David Ireland.

"With New Zealanders now able to place bets on handball, Handball NZ stands to benefit, meaning we will have more funding to invest in this increasingly popular Olympic sport.

The ability of the TAB to offer handball follows the New Zealand Handball Federation receiving official confirmation of its status as a National Sporting Association from Sport New Zealand.

“Being formally recognised by Sport NZ was a great way to finish 2020. Getting on board with TAB NZ is a superb way to start 2021” says Ireland

The TAB currently offers odds on 34 sports and has a legislated objective to maximise the returns to New Zealand sports from betting.

"Every year the TAB returns around $150 million to New Zealand racing and sport. Handball is a big sport internationally and a great addition for our customers, the speed and flow of the game lends itself well to betting", says Simon Thomas, TAB GM Betting and Customer. "Every bet on sport through the TAB has a direct benefit back to New Zealand. We hope this new partnership helps grow the sport in New Zealand.

Handball has featured at every Olympics since 1972. There are 28,000 handball clubs around the world and over 27 million registered players. New Zealand has played in the Asian Handball Championships in the past, most recently the NZ Men’s Team competing in Kuwait in January 2020, but has yet to make the full world stage.

Media contacts:
David Ireland, NZHF President – 021 343 615, president@handball.org.nz
Daniel Triebsch, NZHF Secretary-General – 021 209 2985, secretary@handball.org.nz
Jun Tanlayco, NZHF Media Officer – 021 681 055, media@handball.org.nz