The following was sent to New Zealand Football stakeholders regarding the Delivery and Sustainability project New Zealand Football are currently working on:

Dear Football Stakeholders, 

I hope this finds you well. 

A little over a month ago I wrote to you and we held an open Zoom call about the progress we were making on the Football in NZ Delivery and Sustainability work you asked us to undertake. It was also the time of the wonderful announcement of the hosting rights for the 2023 WWC. 

Much in all of our worlds has changed since then. COVID-19 has again exposed some of our countries and football’s pre-existing sustainability challenges making this work more important than ever. 

This note is to give you an update on what we have been doing and again invite you to an open call to discuss and share progress. 

Based on the feedback we received we made this approach more about action than just a ‘Review’. So we have mobilised teams to work on four challenges facing Football. The brief of these teams was to engage the wider community looking for insight, inklings and ideas for how we can nudge and move forward. A focus is on learning and progress – not fixing or being right! 

The teams are made up of people from across the Football in NZ eco-system and thanks to all involved. Your energy and response has been tremendous – especially as we know most of you are doing this work on top of your day job and other football responsibilities – all in the very tricky and difficult Covid19 environment.

This work is not easy. Football is a complex system with many different requirements, views and perspectives. However, we are confident it will make a difference. We do not see it as standalone or addressing all of our challenges at once. In fact, this work is already throwing up other challenges which we as a football community will need to consider going forward. We do see it as an opportunity to create movement and improve our ability as a system to grow and adapt.

As a reminder... the Steering Group is currently made up of; Julian Bowden, Jamie Hall, Mike Davies, Andrew Pragnell, Rebecca Rolls, Liz Dawson, Jannine Mountford and myself. Our facilitators are David Hansen and David Steel.

The challenges we are addressing are: 

1. The integration and alignment of competition structures 
2. Evolving our operating model for football in NZ 
3. Building a culture of diversity and inclusion 
4. Developing and supporting smaller and sometimes unseen parts of the wider football ecosystem 

Each of these challenges now has: 

1. A working Creative Brief. 
2. A team researching insights and engaging in our communities to learn more about their challenge. 
3. A plan to identify a set of actions the team believe will move football forward. 

Whilst all of this this has been happening SportNZ has also been taking action. Football is one of the 11 sport and recreation entities they have selected to be part of the first wave of the Strengthen and Adapt process that was announced by the Minister as part of the sport recovery package. (See the SportNZ website for more details) 

This is a very exciting and game changing opportunity for us and for sport as a whole in NZ. We will be providing further information in due course but, as a starting point, a summary of the outcomes that the Minister and Sport NZ are looking for out of this Strengthen and Adapt process are: 

For the organisations and networks involved to emerge: 

- Fit for purpose and future-proofed (next 10-15years)
- Stable and capable of supporting the needs of participants into the future
- Able to drive increased participation through creating quality experiences
- Able to address historical inequities, and inclusion and diversity gaps in the system 

What they tell us is this is not about: 

- Carrying on as usual- Replacing lost income
- Propping up old models
- Reinforcing old behaviours 
- Funding the future plan 

As you will see this very much lines up with the work we have underway and that is why we are very excited and grateful for the extra support it will afford us. 

Some of you are already involved in one way of another with this work either directly or maybe via a staff member or stakeholder. However, once again to ensure we connect with as many people as possible I will be holding an open forum via Zoom. The next one is scheduled for 1st September at 7.30pm. If you wish to participate in this please contact Tracy Brady at Tracy.Brady@nzfootball.co.nz. To maximise the benefit of such a forum, I ask that those who wish to participate send in questions or comments prior to the zoom call to Tracy Brady by 5pm on 31st August. As this communication is going to the stakeholders please feel free to share this with your own stakeholders, who may also like to participate or find our more, and so they are aware of this opportunity to ask questions. 

This work and its timeframes are continuing to evolve, but over the next 8 weeks we aim to have a draft plan with action ideas for consideration. We will also continue these updates and calls. If you have any questions don’t hesitate to call me or any of the steering group. 

Yours in football, 

Johanna Wood 
President 

Article added: Friday 28 August 2020