Hockey Association plans to cut travel

South Africa were the overall winners in both the men and the women.
“Now that we have a stadium we are looking forward  to making full use of it. We will be holding a  number of tournaments and we are also hoping  to set up a new National League structure,”  said HAZ president, Farai Kays Kanyangarara.
He said they were hoping to come up with a new format for the league which will see the teams travelling less.

“Instead of teams travelling constantly we want to create a format that will see them travel once. We want to come up with a tournament format which will cover about six matches per weekend,” said Kanyangarara.
He said the year will also see them reviving a number of tournaments that had been shelved because of lack of facilities.
At the moment the country has only one facility that is functional as Magamba Stadium is still to be refurbished.

“We are hoping to revive the HAZ Cup next year and we also have a number of international tournaments lined up,” he said.
Kanyangarara said the tournaments will be played at Khumalo Hockey Stadium.
Bulawayo will play host to the Easter Tournament in April.

“It is a social tournament and it was called the Jargav tournament before. We get a number of clubs from different places. We are hoping that we will get about two or more clubs from South Africa taking part,” he said.
Kanyangarara said the national league would start soon after the Easter tournament. He said the indoor hockey league would however start some time in January.
“We will also have a lot of schools activity during the year as well,” he said.

Other tournaments that will be held include the Tri-Nations Tournament which involves Zimbabwe, Botswana and Namibia.

Kanyangarara said they might be changing the tournament name as there were other nations that had expressed interest in participating at the tournament.
“Some neighbouring countries have been enquiring about   the tournament and we might be including them next year. The   tournament name will then change if they do join us,” he said.
Bulawayo will also play host to the Africa Cup for Club Champions in December. This year the tournament was held in Zambia.