The city put on a great show of hospitality to the athletes, coaches, support staff and friends and families of our teams.

Supported by Events Tasmania, we are truly grateful at Hockey Australia to have a partner like Events Tasmania and Launceston for the following four years regarding hosting our Australian U18 championships.

Sport across this country should recognise and respect the great pride Tasmanians have in sport – playing, hosting, supporting and being involved at all levels.

I have had the privilege in this role as CEO of Hockey Australia and my former role as COO of North Melbourne Football Club of seeing how strong the community of Tasmania is towards sport, it is unrivalled and something the state should be immensely proud of.

I love coming to Tasmania, so do all the people I have worked with at both organisations.

I say to all Tasmanians, continue to seek to be sporting leaders, don’t settle for anything but a position of strength and leadership in sport and don’t let anyone say the state isn’t “big enough” for whatever it is that is up for grabs in a sporting context.

Hockey Australia sees Tasmania as a hockey strength, we look forward to bring our national teams back to Tasmania in the near future.

Finally – to Hockey Tasmania, great co-hosts with us this past two weeks, use the hosting of U18s to build a legacy for your state teams by playing at home and in 2020 I respectfully put out the challenge that you will field two strong boys and girls teams at the U18s champs, and rival the “big” states in the delivery of talent towards our national teams.

Thanks again to all the state and in particular those in Launceston for your support.

THE smart phone-Pokemon. My imagination portrays a world of zombies where people have been conned that this product is a must have, everyone has a “smart phone” cleverly marketed “smart phone” i.e. for smart people.

The world and its products have come a long way. But I think the human race is going backwards, where rich and poor never have enough. But both probably have a smart phone. With all the problems getting worse on planet Earth, why are we spending billions of dollars exploring the universe by smart people.

FOLLOWING any election the winner always declares that no matter how slim their majority that they have a mandate to implement all policies announced during the election campaign.

I suspect that not everyone who voted for the Coalition embraced each and every policy. For instance how many Coalition voters earning under $87,000 voted for a tax cut for the wealthy?

Already there appears to be changes in the area of superannuation at variance with the changes announced before the election. The plebiscite on same-sex marriage will clearly provide a mandate as people will not vote along party lines. However in this instance a conscience vote is to be allowed for Coalition members.

Hard to follow the logic and incurring the $16 million cost of holding a non-binding plebiscite.

BEFORE religion dies out all together, it may be a good idea for the three major Abrahamic religions to join together to form a global movement, that celebrates what people have in common.