Report on the Super 6s Midlands Indoor Qualifier

Yardley HC entered the Super 6s Midlands Indoor Hockey Qualifiers at Aldersley Stadium in Wolverhampton on Sat 17thDecember. This was the first time that the club had entered an indoor competition for a number of years.

Our nine-player squad included Jeevan Chagger, Zach, Paul and Noah Jarvis, Matt Bartlett, Noor Zaman, Zakariyya Asif and  Neal and Alex Makepeace.

Yardley were drawn in Pool B against some of the more experienced indoor sides: Belper, Barford Tigers, Loughborough Town and Olton and West Warwickshire. As if this wasn’t daunting enough we started the first match a man down as one car had to stop off on the way to pick up an indoor hockey stick.

Unfortunately, we didn’t manage to score a goal during any of our four matches, but we did create a surprising variety of chances. The first game saw a goalmouth scramble against Belper keeper, with Zakariyya getting a shot off, only to be saved. Whilst we had countless number of short corners given against us, we did manage a grand total of three shorts in our favour, but none of them saw a goal go our way. A midfield interception in the last game against Loughborough Town almost saw a Yardley getting a goal, with the ball being put fractionally wide after a 1 v 1 with the keeper.

For the record, our results were:

0-7 against Belper, 0-5 against Barford Tigers, 0-10 against Olton and 0-9 against Loughborough  Town.

In spite of the score-lines the team gave respectable accounts of themselves considering the majority of the squad had never played indoor hockey before. Nobody on the team was 100% sure of the rules and many times the whistle was blown against us for rules that we had not come across before. The sin bin became a second home for a few players, including but not exclusive to Alex, Zach and Paul. It was a different ( and much quicker ) style of play that what we were used to, but it was good to see how quickly the style was picked up throughout the day, even against the top flight teams. A very steep learning curve as you might say.

Neal and Paul shared goalkeeping duties for the day and they definitely helped to keep the goals against as low as they were. It was a good experience of such a fast-paced game as well as good dribbling with the ball and with the ball being forced to be kept on the ground.

A special thanks to the Chagger and Jarvis families who turned out in numbers to give support. A big thank you also to Sarah Skidmore as coach on the side. Finally, a massive thank you to Jeevan who set up the team’s participation in the event.

A team photo appears in the Photo Album on this website. Also, check out the Facebook page set up by Zach

Compiled from reports sent in by Zach and Jeevan