For all of you fans out there who like a bit of hockey live streaming, we have some great news. The men’s Australian Hockey League (AHL) will be broadcasting 20 of the competition’s 24 matches courtesy of a partnership between Hockey Victoria and Hockey Zone. Australia’s elite inter-state competition to be broadcast to a global audience
The matches, which will be played at Melbourne’s State Netball & Hockey Centre between Friday 27th and Sunday 5th October 2013, will be live streamed through the Hockey Victoria website, www.hockeyvictoria.org.au .
The AHL is the premier hockey competition in Australia, being a national championships contested by teams representing each of the country’s eight states and territories. Each state team contains the finest players in the region, many of which are established members of Australia’s sensational Kookaburras team. It is widely regarded as one of the strongest and most competitive field hockey leagues in the world.
Last year’s competition winners were the OAMPS Queensland Blades, a team that was certainly not short of international quality. Mark Knowles, Rob Hammond, Matty Swann and five times FIH Player of the Year Jamie Dwyer (pictured) all played a part in the Queensland victory.
With the FIH Junior World Cup, Rabobank Hockey World Cup and the Commonwealth Games all on the horizon, you can be sure that the players will be giving absolutely everything to get selected for those high profile international events.
AHL information 2013
The Australian Hockey League (AHL) is Australian hockey’s premier competition; a national championships contested by eight teams representing the eight states and territories of Australia. Athletes from the Kookaburras and Hockeyroos – Australia’s national teams – and the development and national under 21 squads compete for their home state alongside the top non-national team players in that state.
The 2013 competition will see a number of changes to previous years as the AHL continues to innovate in order to provide competing athletes the best possible development opportunities and to more closely align the AHL with international competitions.
The 2013 AHL tournaments will be hosted from 27 September until 5 October in Melbourne, VIC (men) and Hobart, TAS (women) alongside the boys and girls Under 13 National Championships. The primary purpose of hosting the U13 tournaments alongside the AHL is to offer the developing young players the opportunity to be part of an event with elite athletes with access to additional training and opportunities to watch their senior counterparts.
The AHL provides an important platform for aspiring Australian representatives and acts as the ‘stepping stone’ for hockey’s future international stars. For those players competing, the AHL is a vital stage in the development and selection pathway of athletes to the national squads.
Format
The men’s and women’s AHL tournaments will each feature two pools of four teams, in the same format adopted for FIH international tournaments, the Champions Trophy and the World League. This is a change from the previous format – a two week round-robin with crossover matches – making for a shorter, more streamlined competition.
The pools are determined by the teams’ finishing positions from the 2012 AHL with the states finishing first, fourth, fifth and eighth comprising Pool A and those teams that finished second, third, sixth and seventh in Pool B.
Each team plays the other three teams in its pool once, collecting three points for a win, one for a draw and none for a defeat. Based on their positions at the end of the first pool phase, the top two teams from Pools A and B go forward to Pool C to contest the medal positions while teams finishing third and fourth in Pools A and B progress to Pool D to contest positions 5-8.
Source: FIH and Hockey Australia
