32 Black Sticks, Jeremy Hayward and a New Batch of Kids: New Zealand’s Premier Hockey League Is Loaded for Saturday
New Zealand’s domestic season starts with a serious cast list. The 2026 Premier Hockey League, which opens on Saturday, will feature 32 Vantage Black Sticks, 16 men and 16 women, plus 11 international guest players and 22 emerging players stepping up from the Junior Hockey League.
The headline guest is a big one. Australian captain Jeremy Hayward joins the Falcons, a two-time Olympian with 266 caps for the Kookaburras. He’s got genuine Kiwi ties too: his brother Leon has represented New Zealand, and their mum grew up in Dunedin. Three young Northern Territory players, Tobias Jenner, Macenzee Dixon and Tiana Crompton, will also wear Falcons colours.
The Black Sticks are spread across all four franchises, and the split is close enough to keep things honest. The Falcons and Alpiners have nine each, the Mavericks eight and the Tridents six, with every franchise carrying both men and women. The Mavericks’ guest list is the most international of the lot: Greta Schabacker, Louis Ridge, Luzie Franz, Pahila Arnold and Paul Dösch. Katharina Barth joins the Alpiners and Titus Wex the Tridents.
For our money, the most interesting number is the 22. Those are the players jumping from the Junior Hockey League straight into games against Black Sticks and internationals, and Hockey New Zealand is pretty open about why: with a clear line to the 2032 Olympics, getting young players into this environment early matters. Simon Brill, Hockey New Zealand’s general manager of high performance, put it simply. The league lets international players bring what they learned at the World Cup back into the domestic game, and lets senior players share it with the kids coming through.
It all starts Saturday in Hawke’s Bay, where the Falcons meet the Alpiners, women at 4 p.m. and men at 5:45 p.m. local time (8 a.m. and 9:45 a.m. PKT). The Mavericks and Tridents follow on Sunday at Lloyd Elsmore Park in Auckland, women at 1 p.m. and men at 3 p.m. local time.
And the calendar is nicely stacked. The league runs four weekends across five locations, with rounds two and three at North Harbour on 28-29 November, rounds four and five in Hamilton on 5-6 December, and the finals weekend in Christchurch on 11-12 December, the Grand Final on Saturday 12 December. Sitting right in the middle of it, the Black Sticks men host India at Lloyd Elsmore Park on 19, 21 and 22 November, marking 100 years since India’s first tour to New Zealand in 1926. Expect plenty of PHL players in that series too.
