This year, as with all others, was seen at the start of the season as a ‘crucial one’. To Premiership football teams this means there are strong possibilities of promotion or relegation; to the Old boys it means that there are serious doubts whether or not were get 11 bodies capable of holding sticks out each week.

The first game saw us travel to Wapping to play kings, our close friends and rivals. This game defined our season and was the story of most of our away games: we were late, started with less than 11 players (6 in fact!) but ended up getting a draw due to a greater level of skill and commitment than the opposition. Indeed it was games like this one that made the effort of organising this rabble of players feel like it was worth it. On a number of occasions this season we turned up late, didn’t warm up and yet gave the oppo a serious hockey lesson.

The team this year was our youngest for many years; this was mainly due to half the team being 05’ Alleyn’s leavers who are in my extended friends list; the most pleasing thing was how these players blended in beautifully with our remaining older players (Damo, Mik, and Lawsy). The new players also brought with them a high level of play which forced everyone else to raise their game, which they certainly did, and should have led to us winning our league. We finished 3^rd in the end, 3 points behind the champions and 1 point behind 2^nd; although this is obviously annoying as a win in either of our games against BBHC (who are frankly rubbish) would have seen us taking the title. However we lost both those games, this meant we learnt the hard way that everything must be earned and you can never expect or think you deserve to win anything. For our part we did almost everything we could, the last 7 games of the season all brought wins & 27 goals, but both the teams above had similar results and we had to concede that promotion was not possible on the final day of the season.

Next year will once again be crucial but one thing is for sure; the club is moving in the right direction, for the 1^st time regular training was attended in the sports hall, this led to a noticeably fitter team (even if lawsy and damo did collapse); next year Dan will take charge and I’m sure the same high level of hockey will be played. I’d like to give a special mention to George Lovegrove and Charlie Morris, who with me and Dan played every single game this year despite other commitments. Grumpy chaz is not only a great player but also has the best the chatback in the league. Ben Wordsworth was once again our top scorer with a number of hat-tricks and will look to bag a load more next season.

The season has been a mix of emotions but definitely reminded me why I love the old boys, as the spirit and banter has never been better.