The Alice Springs Hockey Association is one of two community hockey leagues in the Northern Territory, and with both grand final days taking place on the same weekend, umpiring resources were stretched thin for the red centre deciders.
With arrangements falling through at the last minute and headed for uncertainty, the call was put out for replacements to officiate the competition’s two open deciders.
The GVHA’s Starkey and Neilson answered, hopping a plane to umpire the open grand final between Federal and Centrals and the women’s decider between Pioneer and Centrals.
Starkey said the 3,700km round trip supporting a fellow regional hockey competition was an “amazing” experience.
“Alice Springs is the only place in the Northern Territory where you can play hockey apart from Darwin,” she said.
“Darwin at the same time as Alice has their grand finals.
“Alice contacted Hockey Victoria and asked if anyone would like to come up and umpire in Alice Springs for the weekend.
“One of the umpire coordinators or managers got the call-out and Michael and I expressed interest, and they said come on up.
“It was really friendly, and it's always good to make new connections with different hockey communities as well.
“We noticed when we were talking to their president and secretary, we shared a lot of common challenges and things that we dealt with down here.
“They were also dealing with things to do with player retention and building numbers again, particularly in juniors.”
The ASHA grand finals were run and won at the weekend, overseen by Starkey and an award-nominated Neilson, who had been selected as one of four finalists for the Hockey Victoria Community Official of the Year gong.
The duo attended the ceremony in Melbourne’s Federation Square the night before jetting out to Alice Springs, and while Neilson didn’t take out the accolade, he was straight back into the action, bounding straight back onto the pitch several thousands of kilometres away.
The support from the two didn’t go unnoticed by the league.
“It is amazing that this great game of hockey can bring together dedicated and enthusiastic people from across Australia to support even some of our most remote players,” the association said.
