We will be taking our summer break on 10 July and will be walking back into action on Monday 11 September. It’s been an amazing launch season and Sarah and I would like to thank everyone who has helped make it so. Here are a few photos from our final session of this season

Well, here we are, back home in the UK, very tired but very pleased with how well the Walking Hockey trip went. We had an amazing time with Walking Hockey’s reception exceeding our wildest dreams. Everywhere we went it was popular, everywhere we went we met the most amazing people. We are so grateful to everyone who made the trip possible and to everyone we met along the way.

Very importantly World Hockey will benefit too from the interchange of ideas and opportunities we all explored making the hockey family a bigger brighter better place, both now and in the future.

And this is only the end of the beginning. I am confident so much more will come out of this!

Where would we be without adopting the Australian early start culture? This has enabled us to fit in so much more. This morning we met up with Kyle from Basketball Victoria. Ben, Acting CEO of Hockey Australia had connected us to Kyle as Basketball Victoria are ‘running’ a Walking Basketball programme. It was really interesting to exchange views and ideas with Kyle, the more so as we had almost identical approaches despite our sports evolving on different sides of the planet. Where we differ significantly is that Walking Basketball are working very closely with VicHealth, the health care provider in the state of Victoria, and targeting over 70 year olds. Through VicHealth and other similar organisations there are already many organised health and fitness clubs for the elderly so Basketball Victoria have ready made target audiences. Indeed VicHealth actively fund these and have provided grants to Basketball Victoria for their Walking programmes.

The other area where they differ is in how the sessions are run. They don’t have to be led by coaches, but can be led by facilitators who may have little or no basketball experience but are provided with training and resources so that they can deliver sessions. Also venues can purchase a Walking Basketball pack containing a venue guide, a facilitator guide, hoops, bibs and balls.

This seems to be a common approach over here as Hockey Australia’s Hook Into Hockey programme for juniors does the same with the additional offer of a heavily subsidised rucksack, stick, ball, shinpads and bib.

One area of mutual concern is that of keeping the product (Walking Hockey or Walking Basketball) under an element of control so that it is played to the same basic rules and in the same inclusive spirit everywhere.

So all in all an excellent meeting and we’ve agreed to keep in touch in the future.

After this we checked out of the hotel and headed downtown for a few hours walking along the impressive River Yarra. They’ve really done a great job turning this area into a lovely place to stroll, eat and drink, so we had lunch there before taking the express lift up to the 88th floor viewing platform of the Eureka Tower with its sky deck. 88 floors in 37 seconds is quite an experience!

We were very lucky as the atmosphere was clear and we could see all around for miles.

Then back to earth, an ice cream and sit in the sun for an hour before heading to the airport for our fourteen hour flight to Dubai, nine hour stop over, then onwards to Birmingham and home.

This is our last but one day of our trip and we had two major meetings to do.

We began the day at the Victoria State Hockey and Netball Centre in the Melbourne suburbs. We met Sash who is the General Manager. He gave us a tour of the fantastic facility and told us about the social hockey offerings they provide. He had been updated on Walking Hockey via our meeting with Hockey Australia on Tuesday.

We then had a quick trip to the coast and to Just Hockey, the largest hockey retailer in Australia.

In the evening we went to Footscray HC. They have two pitches plus a warm up area and  a large clubhouse, amazing facilities. We gave our Walking Hockey presentation to their Board and it went very well indeed . As with everyone we have met on this trip they were great people and we had some very interesting discussions.

They are keen to be our twin club in Australia.