Hockey calendar set
The National, Thursday February 11th, 2016
By HENRY MORABANG
THE PNG Hockey Federation released their 2016 calendar yesterday.
Federation chief Kaluwin Potuan (pictured right) said the hockey season this year would be very slow with only three major tournaments.
The focus this year for the national team is the World League Round One – a qualifying tournament for the Oceania hockey playing countries which include Australia and New Zealand. This is an important event for hockey in PNG to gauge the performance of the representative men’s and women’s teams.
Potuan said the World League Round One tournament was tentatively penciled for Port Vila, Vanuatu in June-July.
Vanuatu has an official turf for five-aside hockey tournament, and also they are centrally located for the participating countries.
The countries that will take part are Solomon Islands, Tonga, Fiji, PNG, Vanuatu, Australia and New Zealand.
Another major tournament on the hockey calendar is the Fiji Centenary event – Fiji celebrating 100 years of sports in their country, and hockey tournament will be part of the programme.
Potuan confirmed that PNG would be sending a team to take part in this centenary event. The major event for this year is the local PNG Games in Kimbe.
The PNG Hockey Federation is calling on all affiliated hockey centres to register their interest to take part in the hockey competition during the games.
The PNG Games will be held in Kimbe from Nov 26 to Dec 11.
He appealed to all the local associations to start their competition by March and the season proper in April.