Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, December 29, 2020: The Asian Hockey Federation successfully concluded its final Executive Board meeting for 2020 last Saturday, December 26, with President Dato' Fumio Ogura revealing progress had been made on all fronts despite the pandemic situation.
Executive Board members were informed that 17 Olympic Solidarity projects for the 2017-2020 cycle were completed along with 87 other development projects in the past year, with one of the biggest among these being the successful handover of a pitch in Andijan, Uzbekistan under the 2019-2020 AHF Pitch Project.
“It is very encouraging to see progress being made on all fronts, despite the limitations of the pandemic situation,” said AHF President Ogura.
“I am, as always, grateful towards the AHF team led by Chief Executive Dato' Tayyab Ikram for the successful delivery of previous objectives for the year, and for their dedication and spirit towards the sport of hockey.”
The main focus of the meeting was looking ahead, and planning, for 2021, with special emphasis on events, development, education activities, equipment distribution as well as a new social media and website strategy.
AHF Chief Executive Tayyab Ikram said: “I am thankful to our Executive Board for providing us their valuable insights and updates from their countries and regions. With this end of year meeting, we are proud to report significant progress on all fronts made throughout the year.
“I would like to stress again that we will prevail through these challenging times and to do this we must now adapt ourselves to the ‘New Normal’. Once we are able to strike this balance, I am sure we will become able to achieve even greater milestones,” Tayyab Ikram added.
Updates were given on the Tokyo Olympic Games, AHF Pitch Project and national association activities among other topics. Asia will be represented by two men’s teams at the re-scheduled Olympic Games in July-August, 2021 – hosts Japan and India – while in the women’s competition, three Asian sides will feature: Japan, China and India.
Online education activities were highlighted with the Executive Board being informed that 183 online courses and workshops were held in 2020 with more than 6,000 participants.
Rounding it all up was the welcome news that, in social media, there were more than 47 million impressions on Facebook, a 120 per cent growth in hockey audience.
Source: Asian Hockey Federation
