Smith positive on new league

Black Sticks men’s coach Darren Smith is thrilled with the announcement of a ‘‘gamechanging’’ hockey pro league to reach New Zealand shores in 2019.

The International Hockey Federation (FIH) has confirmed that both the Black Sticks men and women will be part of the league which will feature the top nine international teams only.

Smith said the tournament would be beneficial for the game in New Zealand and will only strengthen the two national sides.

‘‘It’s really fantastic,’’ he said. ‘‘New Zealand Hockey have gone through a very thorough process and this will give hockey a real boost here, there is going to be plenty of good teams in there.’’

The new league, which is due to launch in January 2019, will see the nine best men’s and women’s teams from around the world play each other both at home and away every year, across a total of 144 games.

This means the Black Sticks men and women will play eight matches at home against the likes of top tier nations Australia, Germany, the Netherlands and Spain.

‘‘These are the top teams in the world so to get these top fixtures annually can only be positive for the Black Sticks.’’

Smith expected that the matches would attract bigger crowds, bigger sponsors and bigger revenue for New Zealand Hockey, which in turn would help fund the teams’ busy tour schedule and the sport nationwide.

‘‘I would expect a New Zealand versus Holland match is going to be a pretty big event, with a jam-packed stadium. It will create some real interest.

‘‘We have eight home games so we want to pack these stadiums out and really take it to Belgium, Germany and these international sides.’’

He said although this would help strengthen the nine sides involved, those teams that miss out could go backwards.

New Zealand would be guaranteed a spot in the league for the first four years, Smith understood.

Black Sticks stalwart Shea McAleese was relieved his side was included in the pro league schedule. ‘‘It’s a bit of a relief to get into it, it was heavily contested and in missing out we could have been thrown into the international wilderness, we deserve it.’’

McAleese compared the pro league to that of the All Blacks home and away schedule each year where they would play the big test matches in the southern hemisphere during their season, and head to the northern hemisphere for the off-season.

He said the pro league would remove any confusion over the current world series, which is often hard to understand.

‘‘Basically this will work on a performance and review system. The current system is flawed. It’s a bit like Super Rugby at the moment – people don’t actually get it.’’

He agreed with Smith that the pro league would be great for the Black Sticks as it had always been hard attracting top-tier teams from the northern hemisphere to New Zealand.

‘‘One of the biggest hurdles we have is trying to get the competition we need down here. We often end up meeting halfway and playing the Asian nations, so we kind of miss the ball on European style hockey.’’

He said the pro league would test the Black Sticks out initially, but they would improve as the seasons went by.

‘‘Hopefully we will be supported by the new Zealand public.’’

The Black Sticks men have performed consistently over the past few years to maintain a place in the top 10 nations in the world. The same can be said for the Black Sticks women.

The Black Sticks men are in Auckland training before leaving to play Belgium and then to South Africa for the semifinal of the world series which kicks off on July 9 against France.