Last night the EIHA shared some great news for our plans to return to competitive play, when they announced that they had successfully secured from the government £1.2m for the three NIHL divisions. This has been down to the determined efforts of the EIHA Board, and in particular board member Andrew Miller who has worked tirelessly as our NIHL National liaison and in driving the funding application. We’d like to extend our thanks to Andrew and the Board for what they have achieved.

What we need to do now is to work through the detail to understand the form and allocation of the funding to model the impact that it will have on NIHL National clubs. This will involve looking at how the funding can be made available (e.g. through grants or loans), what needs to be put in place to draw down on it, and how much is available to each club.

This will feed into our planning which is currently underway across the other key parts of putting on a league competition such as fan attendance rules, team participation, fixtures and league wide Covid safety protocols.

Once we know more, we will update you further with how our plans are developing. In the meantime, our thanks once again to Andrew Miller and the EIHA board for their work on this so far.

The NIHL owners group would like to thank all fans for their patience and support, and wish you all a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.