What. A. Day.
There’s an affinity that accompanies the first day of the season. There’s an excitement of the unknown but ultimately, everyone plays this game for a reason, and that reason should have been for days like Saturday.
I’m fortunate enough to be going into my 10th season in the National premier League and can happily report that I have never experienced anything quite like this past weekend.
With all the stressors and the drama that accompanied the organisation of Saturdays’ fixtures, let’s talk about the important stuff.
Our Women picked up a valuable point away from home (technically) against a top side in East Grinstead. By last season’s table, there’s only 1 fixture we could have been assigned to harder than the task we got to open our campaign and under the circumstances, the girls did brilliantly well to grab a point.
Pre-Season has been disruptive, as it always is at Holcombe, and as a result, new Head Coach Leigh Maasdorp hasn’t had a full group together at any stage.
As a result, the girls took 14 to the game; 3 were debutants and new to the National league altogether, a number were new to the club and would have been forgiven for needing time to adjust and gel and that’s without mentioning that Leigh herself had to kit up and play whilst trying to deal with the stresses that accompany a Head Coach role in the National Premier League.
Upon arrival at East Grinstead, Holcombe were informed of there being no water available to the pitch due to a ‘technical difficulty’. Amid considerable immediate confusion, a number of possible pitches were suggested in the immediate area before Tonbridge School was able to accommodate proceedings.
With the start time now delayed by over an hour and preparations suitably messed up, a convoy of both parties headed East to commence a shortened preparation and warm-up. News of the change of venue across Social Media accounted for a considerable crowd at the home of Tonbridge Hockey Academy as Holcombe fans made the short trip from Rochester to support the Women.
It was always going to be a tough assignment against a perennially strong East Grinstead outfit but the girls defended bravely at times and created enough opportunities to feel slightly annoyed at only returning to Holcombe Park with only a point.
Having only lost once away from Home last season, it was always important for the girls to set their stall out early in this campaign and thankfully, that’s exactly what they did.
For the men, everything through Saturday was up in the air. There were so many changes throughout the day that it was difficult to keep up.
Once we finally got to Tonbridge, the lights became an issue. With a timer set for 8pm due to the local houses, our 7.15pm amended start was never a possibility.
With us supposed to be having the same Technical Delegate as the Women, a host of scenarios involving the utilisation of the second pitch at Tonbridge, playing with no TD and then playing with either squad’s manager as the technical delegate were proposed and subsequently refuted.
In the end, the final straw came at 5.45pm with the request that we start as soon as possible before 6.30pm. Without even being changed by this point, the game was called off and will subsequently be rearranged as a double header weekend sometime in the future.
Needless to say this was a massively frustrating day. We’ve all been waiting since April to get back on the pitch competitively for Holcombe and to have that pulled away at the last minute is out of our hands but gives us a good opportunity to get an extra week of prep in before the season really begins next weekend away at Holcombe.
Next weekend, the Women take on the University of Birmingham on Saturday before the Men face Beeston on Sunday afternoon.
Image courtesy of Grout Photography