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Western Heights Hockey Tournament - April 2011

The Hastings Boys’ 1st XI hockey team continued their pre-season programme by competing at the Western Heights Tournament.  Both Heretaunga College and John Paul College will be at the same National Schools Tournament as HBHS.  With Western Heights being in the tournament above, this would be a good test of how far we had come.  The first game started at a frantic pace as both teams struggled to settle.  Once we started to pass more quickly we cut Herataunga College to pieces with some excellent hockey winning by seven goals to one.  We got into our game very quickly against John Paul College.  Dylan Thomas scored five goals and Luke Bradley scored two.   We were able to play all of our junior players as well as trying a few new tactical play patterns.

In the third game we played Western Heights High School who will compete in the India Shield Tournament.  Although this was by far the toughest test we dominated the majority of the game in terms of both territory and possession.  We were comfortably two nil up playing some excellent hockey when towards the end WHHS turned over ball in their defensive quarter and went the length of the pitch to score a hotly contested goal.  The score ended 2-1 however, with Hastings deservedly running out winners.  Our last game in pool play was against Whakatane High School.  We rested many of our senior players at the start of this game again giving valuable experience to many of the newer squad members.  Whilst the changes didn’t lead to a drop in our standards, players struggled a little bit to put play patterns together against such a defensive team.  As the game went on Whakatane tired leaving  large holes in their defence.  As a result we started to score freely running out comfortable winners.

The final was against Western Heights HS.  Once again we started the better team dictating play.  We could have scored ten goals in five minutes if we had executed more efficiently in the circle.  WHHS were potent again on the counter attack and in particular had one player who caused issues for us.  We found ourselves incredibly 2-0 down at half time as we turned over ball on attack.  We traded goals in the second half and then scored with 10 minutes to go to make the score 2-3.  We piled the pressure on Western’s defence but we couldn’t score.  We were the best team there but this just went to prove that the best team doesn’t always win.  Everyone was very disappointed not to lift the trophy, finishing runners up but we’ve improved out of sight thanks to the work done over the summer.  Congratulations for the progress made so far.  To win our national tournament later this year we need to improve again becoming more ruthless in the circle, turn over less ball on attack and again improve our defensive structure.