Mike Bignell – Letter to Community Hockey NZ-Chair

1 March 2019 
Mike Bignell – Letter to Community
Hockey NZ-Chair

On Monday Hockey New Zealand released the key findings of the independent review into the Black Sticks women’s team environment. You will have witnessed the story been played out in the media.

Firstly, we want to thank you as our valued hockey community for your understanding at what has been an incredibly difficult time for everyone involved.

While we are unable to go into any specifics of the review to protect the privacy of all involved, we understand the difficulties this may have presented you at a grassroots level.

Hockey NZ has released the key conclusions and recommendations from the review as this was agreed in the terms of reference between Hockey NZ, High Performance Sport NZ and the Hockey Players Association before we commissioned the review.

We are proud to say that throughout this process we have stuck to the Hockey NZ values and have kept our integrity.

While the situation has not been pleasant, we have been fortunate to learn a lot about the workings of our sport through this process.

We have started to implement some of the key findings. These are not changes that we will make solely at the high-performance level but also in our schools and clubs and right across our sport.

Hockey NZ welcomes any questions your community may still have as we know how important it is to receive and respond to feedback from our hockey family.

Mike Bignell
Hockey New Zealand Chair 
chair@hockeynz.co.nz