Hi everyone,
A week’s a long time in football, aye?
Hopefully you’ll have caught the news that all football in New Zealand has been postponed until May 2. If not, HERE is a full copy of NZ Football and WaiBOP Football Federation’s communications, which were released yesterday. WaiBOP Football also has a COVID-19 updates page on their website, which you can visit HERE.
So. What does this mean for football in Matamata?
We’ve attempted to summarise all the key points below. Please contact me on dwayne@dbmm.co.nz if you have any further questions.
SENIOR FOOTBALL
SEASON START
The season will now start on May 2/3, rather than March 28 (Men’s first team) and April 4/5 (Men’s Reserves & Ladies team). A new WaiBOP Premiership draw will be available soon, while the Waikato Men’s & Women’s Division 1 draws will be available in due course. We’ll notify everyone when we have it. WaiBOP believes there will still be time to complete a full season should the season get underway as scheduled.
TRAINING
NZ Football and WaiBOP have recommended we don’t resume training until after April 18. We have cancelled all training, along with pre-season friendlies, until March 30. We’ll review things then and decide whether we can resume training from March 31 or at a later date.
SUBS & REGISTRATION
We still need everyone to register via their MyComet account. More HERE. This is so we can allocate players to teams and be ready to go when the season starts.
To help with this we have pushed the subscription deadlines back by a month. They are now:
- Senior Men: $230 (if paid by April 30) // $260 (if paid during May) // $290 (if paid from June 1).
- Senior Ladies: $200 (if paid by April 30) // $230 (if paid during May) // $260 (if paid from June 1).
- Students: $130.
A deposit option and payment plans are available to help ease the financial burden. Find out more HERE.
JUNIOR FOOTBALL
SEASON START
The 2020 season was always due to begin on Saturday May 2, so there is currently no change here.
TEAMS
We still plan to announce our junior 8th to 14th Grade teams by Friday March 27. We’re currently working through the results from Sunday’s grading day, along with attempting to fit all our players in appropriately sized teams.
- We could do with 3 or 4 more players aged from 10 to 12 to make up another full squad. If your children have friends who’d be keen to play then we’d love to hear from them. Contact me on dwayne@dbmm.co.nz.
SUBS
Due to issues with the digital registration system this year we had a number of children unable to register online. Could those people please arrange to pay subs via online banking to account number 03-0363-0323570-000.
MINI-KICKERS
The Mini-Kickers Introduction session, scheduled for Saturday April 4, has been cancelled. The Mini-Kickers season will now begin on Saturday May 2. Find out more HERE.
MONDAY ACADEMY
All RHFA training has been suspended until April 18 in line with national guidelines, so there will be no further Matamata sessions this term. You can find out more HERE.
APRIL SCHOOL HOLIDAY PROGRAMME
This is due to run from Monday April 20 to Thursday April 23. At this stage we will still run this programme as it takes place after recommended training resumption date of April 18. Should the situation change we will notify you. For more information and registration details you can click HERE.
REFUND POLICY
Should the worst happen and we have limited or no organised football in 2020 we will refund membership subscriptions. This could be a full refund, less any fees charged by WaiBOP Football Federation and NZ Football, if there is no football. We’d expect these fees to be $0 but haven’t yet received advice from WaiBOP. If we get a limited season, then the refund will be paid on a pro rata basis.
We appreciate your support during these unprecedented times. If you have any questions on any of the above, or anything else, please let me know. I’ll do my best to help. Hopefully we’ll all be out on the football field soon.
Best wishes,
Dwayne Barlow
President, Matamata Swifts AFC
Email: dwayne@dbmm.co.nz