Hockey One Pride Round: The Whole League’s In, and Friday Night in Melbourne Is Where It Starts

Three years ago it was one fixture. This weekend it’s the whole league.

Pride Round takes over Hockey One Round 6 from Friday 13 to Sunday 15 November, and for the first time all eight clubs are in. That includes the new Melbourne Cobras, who weren’t even around when this started. What began as a single NSW Pride game in 2023 went competition-wide last season, and now there’s not a corner of the league it doesn’t touch.

The theme this year is “Play Your Part, every role has a responsibility”. It’s a simple idea and a fair one. Players, coaches, officials, volunteers, parents, fans. Everyone in the game has a hand in whether hockey feels safe and welcoming for LGBTQ+ people, and the league isn’t pretending otherwise.

Before the first push-back of every game this weekend, a player will read the Hockey One Pride Pledge on behalf of both teams. It pledges to stand together against homophobia and transphobia, support the LGBTQ+ community, and play a part in making hockey a sport where diversity is celebrated, inclusion is championed, and discrimination has no place. You’ll see it on the pitch too. The home sides wear Hockey Australia’s official Pride Round socks, and the goals carry rainbow backboards, so every goal this weekend lands in front of one.

Hockey One executive manager Sash Herceg put it plainly. Hockey is played by people of all ages, backgrounds, identities and experiences, she said, and that diversity is one of the game’s greatest strengths. Inclusion isn’t one person’s job or one team’s job. It belongs to all of us.

This isn’t a one-weekend gesture either, and the league has the receipts to show for it. Hockey Australia took Gold in the 2026 Pride in Sport Index. Hockey ACT went Platinum for the second year running, Hockey WA took Silver, Hockey NSW took Bronze. Hockey ACT formed its first Pride Advisory Committee this year. Down at club level, Perth’s LGBTQIA+ club the Perth Pythons were named Pride in Sport’s Community Sporting Organisation of the Year, their third national award. Hockey Victoria’s Stand Out Cup drew 42 teams back in February. Hockey Tasmania ran its second Pride Cup, and clubs in Queensland and South Australia ran their own Pride Rounds, Adelaide University Hockey Club now doing it for a fourth straight year.

Pride in Sport’s Ben Cork reckons the Index results show what sustained work looks like. The policy changes, the education, actually listening to LGBTQ+ people in the game. “Sport should be open to every Australian who wants to play,” he said, “and this round is about making that a reality.”

For NSW Pride’s Grace Stewart, watching the round spread from one club to the whole league means something personal. When the Pride first ran it in 2023, Greta Hayes was playing for them and pushing hard in this space. “It is something we have always tried to celebrate and it is great to see the whole league now getting behind it,” Stewart said. “We hope that it shows all LGBTQ+ hockey fans and players that hockey is a safe place to come and enjoy sport.”

The hockey’s pretty good too

None of this is window dressing on a dead round. Round 6 is the penultimate round of the regular season, and Friday night in Melbourne is first against second in the men’s league and second against third in the women’s.

HC Melbourne’s men are perfect, five from five, with Nathan Ephraums on 13 goals for the season. NSW Pride sit second on 11 points, four behind, and Blake Govers has scored in every game so far. A Melbourne win all but ends the race for top spot. A Pride win blows it wide open with one round left.

The women are just as tight. Perth’s women are already through to the finals at five from five, but Melbourne on 12 points and NSW on nine are still sorting out who finishes where, and that matters for the semifinals.

Pride Round fixtures, Round 6 (all times PKT)

Friday 13 November, Parkville, Melbourne

• HC Melbourne v NSW Pride, women 12:30pm, men 2:15pm

Saturday 14 November, Hobart

• Tassie Tigers v Melbourne Cobras, men 7:00am, women 8:45am

Saturday 14 November, Perth

• Perth Thundersticks v Adelaide Fire, men 12:30pm, women 2:15pm

Sunday 15 November, Brisbane

• Brisbane Blaze v Canberra Chill, women 9:00am, men 10:45am

Every match streams live and free on 7plus in Australia and internationally through the Hockey One Global Pass.

For our money, the hockey and the occasion feed each other this weekend. Friday night is a genuine title-race game, and it’s also the game that started all of this three years ago, a rematch of last year’s Pride Round opener in Newcastle. If the Pride win in Melbourne, the last round becomes a shootout. Either way, the league’s made its point before a ball is even hit.