There are easier ways to spend your evenings in Hong Kong than chasing a plastic puck around a rink in tropical humidity after a full day at work in the big city. Sensible people might choose air conditioning, a cold drink, or sitting down occasionally. Thankfully for the rest of us, inline hockey has never been built by sensible people.
This year, MIHWA is proud to welcome Hong Kong into the growing Masters Inline family, as a group of players who have spent decades building the game in one of the busiest cities on Earth finally take their place on the international stage at Masters. For Hong Kong Team Manager Dom Browne, the journey has been years in the making. Inline hockey in Hong Kong stretches back decades, exploding during the great inline boom of the 1990s, when skates became widely available and players began gathering for pickup games on basketball courts, playgrounds, and any stretch of concrete flat enough to survive a hard stop. The game took a major leap forward with the opening of the YMCA King’s Park rink, still the beating heart of Hong Kong inline hockey today. Under those humid Tuesday night lights, generations of players learned the game, built rivalries, and kept inline hockey alive through sheer stubbornness and love for the sport. And like all good hockey stories, eventually the old rivals ended up on the same bench. Many of the players stepping into the 38+ Masters division are the very same people who spent years building the local game from the ground up. Some represented Hong Kong internationally, some played abroad, others balanced hockey around impossible work schedules and family commitments. One player still drives from Macau just to make training sessions. This is not a professionally funded national program with unlimited rink time and sports science departments hovering nearby with clipboards and supplements. This is real hockey.
The team is entirely amateur, self-funded, and built through community effort. Training happens after work, around family life, whenever precious rink time can be secured in one of the most overcrowded sporting cities in the world. Players are using annual leave, personal savings, and veteran knees held together with optimism and tape to make the trip to Bavaria possible.
Frankly, it sounds exactly like MIHWA hockey!
Dom and his group are no strangers to the international game. Back in 2012, Hong Kong teams travelled to the AAU Junior Olympics in Huntington Beach and NARCh in San Jose, returning home with multiple gold medals at 10U and 14U level. Since then, Wheel Hub Asia and the Hong Kong inline community have continued developing players across the region, building pathways and opportunities in a part of the world where inline hockey often fights for visibility against larger sports and crowded schedules.
Their mission now goes beyond simply competing. By running prospect camps and continuing to grow the sport across Asia-Pacific, the Hong Kong group hopes to show younger players that hockey can remain part of their lives long after junior years finish. In many places across Asia, players simply do not realise there is still a pathway to high-level international competition as adults. MIHWA, and the wider Masters movement, is helping change that. MIHWA Vice President Pete Wirt says:
“We are incredibly excited to welcome Hong Kong into the MIHWA family. One of our core missions has always been to show that inline hockey is not just a youth sport, but a lifelong competitive community. Seeing the game continue to grow across Asia, driven entirely by passionate players and volunteers, is exactly what MIHWA is all about.”
There is also something beautifully fitting about old friends reconnecting through Masters hockey once again. Dom is particularly looking forward to seeing former Team GB teammates from 2003 and 2004 and meeting many of the wider MIHWA community for the first time. That, after all, is the real magic of this amazing little sport of ours. Twenty years pass, careers happen, countries change, knees deteriorate, but somehow we all keep finding our way back to the rink. Europe may still be the traditional heartland of Masters Inline Hockey, but the family keeps growing. From Canada to Australia, from South America to Asia, the movement continues to spread through the efforts of players who simply refuse to let the game die quietly.
So, will the Asian dragon roar? That remains to be seen. But one thing is certain: Hong Kong has arrived, and MIHWA is delighted to welcome them to the greatest show in inline hockey. See you in Bavaria.