“As far as I’m concerned, the league has just re-set, and everyone’s starting on zero.”

The last blog I wrote on the 2016/17 season culminated with this sentence. A strange thought process to write the Monday after you failed to win a Championship but a mind-set prevalent throughout elite sport nonetheless.

After conducting the greatest comeback in Super Bowl history back at the start of the year, Bill Belichick famously stressed; “As great as today is, in all honesty, we’re five weeks behind 30 teams in the league in preparing for the 2017 season.”

Such a mind-set became prominent throughout the off-season. A number of sides in the leagues completed their business early, as is becoming the norm nowadays. Player announcements began as soon as May as squads looked to re-shape and settle ahead of the start of pre-season.

For Holcombe, incoming player movements remained eerily quiet for the majority of the summer. A flurry of announcements in August have shown the hard work that has gone on behind the scenes and now it’s an important period for the two sides to settle.

As it happens, we now have an exciting year ahead with both sides heading to Europe this season. The Women take their first venture into Europe next May whilst the Men return to the EHL for the second successive year; taking their place in the Final 16 next April.

New Head Coach Leigh Maasdorp moves from the pitch to the side-line as she leads the Women in their quest to return to the Post-Season in the domestic game whilst taking them to the continent to challenge the best in Europe.

This pre-season, both teams entered the Tonbridge 9’s tournament in mid-August; an exclusively National League event that comprises all of the key elements of pre-season hockey in a 9-a-side tournament.

It was a real mix for the two squads at Tonbridge. The Women, with a 1-day, 3-game tournament, had just one first-team player available. A new group finished in a respectable third place behind Conference challengers Hampstead and Westminster and Sevenoaks Ladies after some tough fixtures and a steep learning curve.

For the men, a two-day, 5-game tournament saw 4 wins and a draw with only three goals conceded to win the competition; a fantastic return for a new group in their first time together ahead of the pre-season programme.

With both sides getting back into their respective training programmes, the Women took to Cannock for the annual Birmingham tournament while the Men made the most of a weekend of hard running before heading back to Hamburg for the second year in succession the weekend after.

Some tough fixtures have provided some great exposure as neither side has had the luxury of even a single training session with the full squad available. With final preparations being wrapped up this week, the domestic campaign begins with a double header away at East Grinstead on Saturday night.

For the Women, it’s a re-match of last years’ play-off semi-final. For the Men, we return to the site of our heaviest domestic defeat since entering the league.

It’s amazing how long the off-season feels but how quickly the pre-season can creep up on you if you’re not prepared.

All of a sudden, we’re right back in the thick of it and it’s full steam ahead towards our opening league fixtures.

Images courtesy of Holcome HC

Main Image courtesy of Steve Grout