Roller Hockey Photos

For a third year in a row England Roller Hockey teams are participating in one the most pretigious tournaments in Portugal,
this year I have decided to take a Minors (players born in 1996 & 1997) and Intermediates (players born in 1994) teams, Minors are players involved on 2011 & 2012 projects and Intermediates are players involved on 2010 project. These projects are part of the Development Plan for our sport to develope players to attend their first European Under 17 Championships.

This tournament will take place in Sesimbra a town half hour away from Lisbon, starting on Thursday and finishing on Saturday. The team will fly out on Thursday morning and will return to England on Sunday morning. This tournament will have 4 teams participating in each level from Under 11 to Juniors giving an opportunity for our players to have a couple of competitive games and watch quality Portuguese teams.

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I understand that there is considerable confusion over what is the Conference System of Competition that we are playing this season. Below I have tried to explain it as simply as possible.

In order for there to be a Club National Champion of England, it was decided to introduce a Conference System of competition for this season.

The Conference System is split into sections, in order to save the cost of traveling if we had introduced a National League at all age levels.

The first section relies on the Regional Leagues from the three Regions, North, East and South, and works as follows :-
At any of the age levels, the top team in the Regional League wins a place directly to the Finals taking place over the weekend of the 4th/5th July.
The second and third teams go into a play-off taking place over the weekend of 6th/7th June from which the best team will make up the fourth team in the finals.
The Play-offs will be run as 2 pools of three.
Each pool will be played as a round robin with the winners of each pool playing for the fourth place available in the Finals.

Therefore, the Finals, comprising four teams at each age level will be played as a round robin to determine the Club Champions of England.

Keith Allen

August 9th, 2009 sees the 8th running of the Goodwood Roller Marathon. Held at the historic Goodwood motor racing circuit near Chichester, West Sussex, the event offers the opportunity to skate outside, on smooth, traffic free tarmac.

The marathon distance of 42 kilometres is not the only distance on offer. A mini-marathon (5 miles), half marathon (13 miles) and double marathon (56 miles) are all available options.

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The prestigious Coupe Des Nations tournament will be held in Montreux Switzerland over the Easter holiday. Eight senior teams some of which are national squads will compete in this bi-annual competition. Coaches of national squads will use this competition to test players and try new tactics in preparation for the forthcoming world championships in Vigo Spain.

Roller Hockey competition at this level has been seen in Switzerland since 1921, England have had success in the past winning competitions on eight occasions ending in1950. Several English clubs have also won titles over the years, Herne Bay won in 1932 and 1938. One other English club, Faversham won in 1930.

England last competed at the Coupe des Nations in 2001.

Our Photographer Gordon Morrison will be at this years competition supplying pictures for the official website again, in the past he was the official photographer for 2005, 2007 Coupe des Nations and Mens World Roller Hockey Championships so look out over easter for his pictures on the Coupe des Nations website.

Herne Bay Utd took on the mighty Reus at the weekend in the Euro Champions League and played to their strengths, the match was end to end entertaining and full of excitement.

In the first half HBU took their chances and it paid off with them going ahead at 2 – 0 fourteen minutes into the match thanks to Brendan Barker and Neil Austin, Reus responded pushing HBU’s defence with plenty of shots on goal but Danny Barton king of the goal cage repeatedly stopped the force of one of Spain’s great clubs. Two goals followed in the first half from Reus taking the half time score 2-2.

I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall in the Reus changing room at half time, the language must have been colourful provoking the attitude adjustment which was evident at the beginning of the second half. Reus put in a couple more goals within the first ten minutes but Brendan Barker scored a wonderful goal (see picture) approx 13 mins. into the second half followed by another by Dendy Hudson 6 minutes later.

Final score HBU 4-7 Reus.
GOALS
Reus Pintado Caldu (x2), Matias Platero (x2), Marc Gual, Pedro Gil, Jori Molet
Herne Bay United Neil Austin, Dendy Hudson, Brendan Barker (x2).

NOW SEE THE FOTOS

Celebrations for the Under 17′s Peterborough team last weekend with winning the 2009 Farnham Shield. Six teams entered this years competition which had its age limit raised to Under 17′s as Farnham, hosts of the competition, were unable to put together an under 13′s team as in past years.

In addition to the winners teams from Bury, Plymouth, Cottenham, Farnham and Ely all entered the tournament displaying a good level roller hockey for this age group. One match displayed good attacking and skating skills, Peterborough and Bury fought hard for a place in the finals with Peterborough sealing their place in the final with a second goal in the last half of the match.

In the final Peterborough again played well against a confident Farnham who defended well in the first half but after conceeding the third goal appeared to loose the fight.

Congratulations to Arthur Corr and the Peterborough players.

The ‘Fair Play” award went to Plymouth and Sam Cayley took the “Best Goal Keeper” award.

Over many years the Farnham Shield has been played by under 13′s by many clubs but for this year the age group has been changed to under 17′s. Sue Marshall one of this years organisers said “we haven’t got an under 13′s team so we can only enter our under 17′s team”.

This years entrants are Plymouth. Peterborough, Bury, Ely, Cottenham and Farnham. The competition will be on Sunday 8th March at the Farnham Sports Centre, Dogflud Way, East St. Farnham GU9 7UD and starts at 9am.

Apart from the shield, medals for first place and runners up will be awarded with each team receiving a miniature shield for entering. Awards for best goalkeeper and a fair play prize will also be awarded on the day.

I’m sure this competitions new age group will bring a fast and exciting level of play.

Click here to see the order of play

Herne Bay United took on the mighty Bassano at the Pier Pavilion last weekend in their fifth match in the current European Champions league. HBU are in pool B of the league along with Tenerife (Spain), Reus (Spain) and Bassano (Italy). Our boys in blue struggled against Bassano one of Italy’s top professional teams in a match which exhibited the differences between professional and amateur teams in our sport. The first half our boys struggled to keep possession but after half time HBU pushed hard and with several shots hitting the goal post were unlucky not to pick up a couple of goals. Final score HBU 0 – 21 Bassano.

SEE THE PICTURES

Over the last two days teams from all over the country competed in the 2009 knockout rounds of The National Cups, at the Bushfields sports Centre, Peterborough. You can see all the results from the two days listed below. Congratulations to the winning teams who will compete in their age groups on Cup Finals day.

Congratulations to Jeannette James of Ely club for winning the 100 squares raffle.

Under 13′s
BURY 6 – 5     ELY
BURY 3 – 6     KING LYNN
HBU     4 – 0     PETERBOROUGH

Cup Finals Day match is Kings Lynn v HBU

Under 15′s
BYE     – KINGS LYNN
PETERBOROUGH     5 – 0     HERNE BAY
ELY (two) 1 – 10 BURY
ELY (one) 5 – 4 MIDDLESBROUGH
KINGS LYNN 1 – 5 PETERBOROUGH
BURY 8 – 2     ELY (one)

Cup Finals Day match is Peterborough v Bury

Under 17′s
HBU 2 – 11 BURY
PETERBOROUGH 1 – 3 MIDDLESBROUGH
ELY 2 – 1 HERNE BAY
BURY 6 – 2 MIDDLESBROUGH

Cup Finals Day match is Ely v Bury

Under 20′s
MIDDLESBROUGH 4 – 6 HERNE BAY
HBU 4 – 1 BURY

Cup Finals Day match is Herne Bay v HBU

SEE THE PICTURES

The CERS Cup is a great opportunity for European clubs to square up to each other on an annual basis. At the start, Hockey Breganze (Italy) had SCRA St Omer (France) around to their place for a match and won 2 – 1 but when SCRA St Omer had them back to get even, they did and better than that, last night they whopped them 5 – 2. Joking aside what a match, yellow, blue and red cards, end to end play and a full house of spectators to boot. The pics are quite good too!

In their next round of the CERS Cup SCRA St Omer will take on Oliveirense (Portugal) on 14th of February and March respectively in the quarter finals.

Looking forward to the European Champions League on those dates, HBU have home matches with Bassano (Italy) and the mighty Reus (Spain) after loosing last night 19 – 1 to Tenerife (last years CERS Cup winners).

Now see the photos from the SCRA St Omer v Breganze