Canterbury Hockey Update

For those interested – here is an update from Canterbury Hockey

LEVEL 2 UPDATE

May 11, 2020

To our hockey community;

We are all excited to receive the Govt announcement yesterday that New Zealand will move to Alert Level 2 on Thursday. We are still yet to know exactly what this means for hockey resuming and Sport NZ are currently seeking clarification on what the gathering size restrictions will mean for sport. The situation is very fluid and continues to change daily but we are working hard to get clarity with urgency and to get hockey back up and running again.

As you’ll all appreciate, there are a number of areas we need to address and plans we need to put in place to ensure that we can keep our wider hockey community safe while training and playing. At this stage, hockey turfs remain closed until we have a definitive date we can resume and we will work with our facilities to plan for open dates and processes over the coming week. I want to reinforce the messages that have already been communicated by Government and Hockey NZ that this will be a staged approach and we will ease into a new normal. There are a number requirements that our Association, Clubs and Schools and other Turf providers need to have in place before we are functional such as contact tracing, hygiene and cleaning, social distancing and mass gathering rules. We are currently working alongside these stakeholders to put these plans in place as quickly and efficiently as possible. We are awaiting further guidance from Hockey NZ but we are hoping to have some consistent templates and guidelines available soon which will govern how our Associations and Affiliated Organisations will phase in a return to hockey.

We are also working to develop options of what a season may look like. This will include a pre-season component to allow teams to hold trials and undertake training in preparation for matches. We are still working on options of what a competition season may look like as there are a number of factors to consider in this including the time spacing of matches, the policing of health and safety requirements and the resources needed to ensure contact tracing and cleaning and sanitation are able to be undertaken. There may be different structures and staggered start dates depending on your grade and this will also be dependent on other factors such as schools’ readiness to resume sport activities and the demand for junior grades this season.

I know that you are all anxious and excited to return to play and we are looking forward to supporting a return to sport. Please bear with us, we are still waiting on further information from Government but please be assured that it is our intention to work closely with our stakeholders to ensure that we can provide a consistent and collaborative approach to resuming hockey at all levels when it is safe to do so.

We will provide further information and advice as soon as it becomes available.

Kind regards Emma