Friday, June 20, 2008

Senior Country Week - Men's Review

Men represent Wimmera hockey at country championships
Despite failing to register a win, the Wimmera Hockey Association’s senior Men’s Team far from disgraced itself in the State Country Hockey Championships held at the Footscray Hockey Centre in Melbourne on the Queen’s Birthday long weekend, 7-9 June 2008.
Coming up against much stronger opposition who were more familiar with the faster synthetic surfaces, the team drew one game against Grampians and lost five, with the worst defeat being a hard fought five nil loss to eventual Division premiers West Gippsland. Other pool matches saw losses to Warrnambool and North Central.
The highlight game for the weekend was the early game on Monday morning in an inter-pool game which matched the Wimmera from Division 3 with the top team in Division 2, Albury Wodonga. Despite going down in a credible 2-3 defeat, this was the only occasion for the tournament that any team scored more than one goal against the Division 2 Premiers.
The final game was the play-off game for third and fourth place against North Central who after being held scoreless in the first half had to fight hard to score four goals against a tiring Wimmera team to win the game.
Mathew McDonald was the top goal scorer for the weekend with two, in front of Ryan Booth, Kyle Creek, Darren Grose and Josh Creek with one each. Every player deserves to be included in the best players list as they all effectively fulfilled whatever role in the team they were asked by the coaches.
The success of the team’s participation in the tournament should not be judged by the lack of victories, but by the valuable experience gained by playing at this higher level on the unfamiliar synthetic surfaces and by the ability of players from four different clubs, most of whom had never played together before, to gel as a team right from the start of the first game and to maintain that cohesion over what is quite a demanding three days of hockey.
For only their second attempt at this level in the last twelve seasons, the team gave an excellent account of themselves as players and as representatives of their Association and region.

Pool Games
Wimmera 1 (R Booth) drew with Grampians 1
North Central 3 d Wimmera 1 (M. McDonald)
West Gippsland 5 d Wimmera 0
Warrnambool 3 d Wimmera 2 (M. McDonald, K. Creek)
Inter-Pool Game
Albury Wodonga 3 d Wimmera 2 (D. Grose, J. Creek)
3rd v. 4th Play-Off
North Central 4 d Wimmera 0
- Senior Country Week Men’s Coordinator Simon King

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