Roller Hockey Photos

Bury St Edmunds Roller Hockey club had a day to remember last weekend. Eastern Counties Roller Hockey Association held their annual Cup Finals day at Bushfields Sports centre, Peterborough. Bury entered five teams in a range of age groups from under 15’s to Seniors and Ladies, and won the lot, they also took the trophy for the Eastern Counties League Division one and the EC Under 17’s league.

Other victors on the day were Cambridge for the under 11’s, Cottenham for the under 13’s and Ely for the Seniors 2 Cup. This was a momentous day with over 150 players and spectators, ten hours of Roller Hockey and many memories of what could have happened.

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Entries close for the under 17’s European championship logo design competition on Tuesday 30th June. The lucky winner will receive a cheque for £100 and two free admission tickets for the week to the championships.

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Congratulations to Herne Bay United and Letchworth for winning the 2008/9 Premier and National Div1 leagues respectively. HBU conceded their last match of the season to Middlesbrough last Saturday evening ending in a convincing 5-7 win for the Northern lads.

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This weekend will see the UK conference playoffs where all our age groups will be contested, Burwell and Soham are the venues hosting this competition with the finals on the weekend of 4th and 5th July.

The teams that have entered this year reads like a role call of clubs that affiliate to the NRHA. Some of the teams entered this year are, Bury, Cambridge, Cottenham, East Grinstead, Ely, Farnham, HBU, HBU Adders, HBU Cobras, HBU Pythons, HBU Vipers, Herne Bay, Kings Lynn, Manchester, Middlesbrough, Peterborough and Plymouth,. You can see and download the full list of teams and schedule by clicking here.

Ten teams two days of roller hockey and one winner, CP Ribes from Spain. Congratulations to our European cousins from Catalunia who won the final beating Kings Lynn in a carefully planed attacking match. Teams from as far south as Plymouth all came together in the East of England to play for this prestigious trophy. This was a two day event starting on Saturday in two venues, Burwell and Soham and ending on Sunday at Soham with the final matches.

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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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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).

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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.