The message below was sent by NZ Football' to its database on Thursday, March 10:

The excitement for the new community season is building, registrations are well underway and we’re looking forward to seeing you and your whanau on the football pitch or futsal court this season. We know 2022 hasn’t started as we’d all hoped so we thought we’d provide an update on how we are approaching the upcoming community season.
 
We’re working hard to make sure our game can take place in the safest possible environment. We want as many people able to play as possible, and we also want to make sure we are providing help to clubs and federations about how this can be done as easily as possible under the Government’s rules.
 
Our current guidance, developed with Sport New Zealand and the federations, sets out how football and futsal should operate under the Red setting of the Covid-19 Protection Framework (CPF). Under the CPF, community sport operates as a Gathering, with Government-set limits at non-MVP gatherings being 25 and limits at My Vaccine Pass (MVP) gatherings being 100 people. To be able to deliver football and futsal competitions and matches, this means we need to run our football and futsal competitions as MVP Gatherings while we’re at the Red setting of the CPF.
 
If restrictions ease after the current Omicron outbreak we will update our guidance to reflect any changes. To prepare for when we move out of Red setting, we’re also developing guidance for the Orange and Green settings with our federations. This will continue to mirror the Government’s CPF, which provides significantly more flexibility to operate football and futsal without needing to use MVP with the Government-set limits (at Orange non-MVP gatherings increasing to 50 and at Green they increase to 100). If you have any questions about how this all works, we’ve developed FAQs about the safety measures and Government requirements for community sport. These can be read on our website.
 
We expect many of you with children will have seen the recently announced changes to school sport, which enable unvaccinated school students to participate in both intra and inter-school sport. We support open access to all sport, and are strongly advocating for alignment across schools and clubs to enable all young people to be able to participate in club football. We know the last few seasons have been heavily disrupted by the impact of Covid-19, and our young people have missed out on a lot over the last couple of years. We don’t want that to continue into 2022.
 
It would be great to see as many people participating in football and futsal this year as possible. We know the power our sport has to connect people and build strong communities. We hope to see you out there. 
 
Yours in football,
New Zealand Football