Sabres Inline Hockey Club

About Our Sport

Sabres Under 14	Playing a Northern region game	at Activezone, North Shore, Auckland	June 2009

In-Line Hockey is a non contact variation of Ice Hockey, where players wear in-line roller blades on playing surfaces of concrete, wood or purpose designed plastic ‘sports’ floor. Originally played as an off season practice game for Ice Hockey players, the game quickly grew to become a sport in its own right. The game is played with 4 players on the playing surface (Rink) plus 1 goaltender, teams usually consist of 8 to 12 players plus a goalie, with players substituted every few minutes throughout the game. Games are played in four periods of 10 minutes with 1 minute quarter time and a 2 minute half-time.

Inline Hockey crosses the bounds of gender and age with divisions from Under 10 to Veterans, however at club level female players may elect to play for a Women’s team once they get older.

In-Line Hockey is played in over 28 countries. In New Zealand the sport is governed by the New Zealand In-Line Hockey Association (NZIHA). There are 29 NZIHA affiliated clubs, divided into 4 regions. Each of these regions run regional competitions in each age grade, referred to as the winter league competition, which runs from April through to August. The top two teams from each region, in each age grade, participate in the National Championships at the end of the winter league season. Each region also selects teams to represent them at the Inter-Regional Championships, which are held each year over Labour Weekend.

 NZ Team selectors observe players at the Inter- Regional Championships in their NZIHA age grades and select players to attend trials for the following years Oceania Squads. In 2005 NZ won gold in all the grades at the Oceania Championships taking the Tasman Cup. In 2006 New Zealand won the Tasman Cup again. Unfortunately at the Oceania Championships in 2007 the Tasman Cup went to Australia, however at the Division 1 IIHF Inline Hockey World Championships the NZ team won Silver. In 2008 New Zealand again won the Tasman Cup. However in 2009 in Perth, on home soil the Australians, despite great efforts from the New Zealand players, claimed back the Tasman Cup. Further information is available from the New Zealand In-Line Hockey Association (www.nziha.com).