HOCKEY

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 77, Issue 6974, 6 October 1948, Page 7

HOCKEY

WANGANUI TOURNAMENT Last Saturday a five-a-side hockey tournament at Wanganui completed the season when over 120 teams gathered from ail parts of the North Island. Each section contained four teams, thus ensuring three games for all teams, after which elimination games were played by winning teams.

Three teams travelled down from Te Awamutu, one team, Old Boys, doing very well to win their section and carry on to reach the semi-finals of the four remaining teams when they were eliminated, after a very even game, by a hit over the goalline. In this game, against Akino Rovers A, the sixth game played by Old Boy’s during the day the team was 2 goals down at haiftime but expert stick work by M. Irwin evened scores by the end of play. Extra time was played and the first team to get into the circle and hit the ball over the back-line was deemed the winner. A foul in the circle gave M. Irwin a penalty bully but he failed to score, and during the play of the bully the referee became involved. T. Burchell broke his stick at a critical time and had difficulty in using one borrowed from a spectator. The team was piaying good hockey and R. Fellow reaching the circle missed an opportunity. K. Adams and J. Allen as backs were combining well in stopping forward play. However, a hard hit and follow-up by an Akino forward reached the circle where his hit over the back-line gave them the game.

During the day Old Boys scored 25 goals with 5 against. Results of games are as follows: Section play: Hutt Valley D won s—o; Dalefield won 4—o; Rovers B, defaulted.

Elimination games: Wanganui Tech. Old Boys won 3—l; Kaponga won s—l;5 —1; Pakeha won 6—l; Akino Rovers A 2—2 and lost on the hit over the line.

The United team did quite well in wirming their section but became eliminated in the first game of elimination play. D. Armstrong showed some speed in following up hard hits and scoring while Savage at fullback hit hard to give his forwards all the play. B. Parkinson played well to go ‘through for goals, and in the last game against Karori B the team missed some opportunities although the game was very even. Results were:—Hutt Valley E won 7—o; Swifts won s—l; Ruru B drew 1—1; Karori B lost 2 —l. The Te Awamutu team were not so successful and didn’t seem to find their combination until a change round in the third game when T. Deed at centre forward showed up in some good stick work to score quickly, J. Spiers was perhaps the unlucky player of the day, missing a number of shots at goal. However, against Greytown they won s—o, but lost to Hutt Valley B s—l, and also lost to Federal 4—l.

On the return journey the teams stopped at the Chateau for a few hours and enjoyed ski-ing. A heavy fall of snow was down to the Chateau and for those who had never seen snow before the experience was quite a novelty.