Hockey team up for new challenge

The Southland hockey team are looking forward to testing themselves against the best teams in the country at the boys’ under-15 national premier tournament in Nelson, starting on Monday.

They are preparing to attend New Zealand’s top tier tournament for the first time, after winning the 2016 national championship division in Napier last year. Although some players have moved out of the team due to age restrictions, there is a solid core with some strong newcomers attending the 16-team event as the team builds on five years of preparation to get to this point.

The team showed recently that they won’t be easybeats, with some encouraging results at a warm-up tournament.

The Tony Fryer-coached side came away with a 3-2 win over Nelson, thanks to a Scott Thurlow double and a goal to Max Milne.

In their second game, they lost to Canterbury B 2-1, but scored the only goal of the second half through Milne after they got off to a slow start.

Meanwhile, the Southland men’s and women’s representative hockey teams had mixed results at national tournaments both held in Wellington recently.

The men’s team recovered from three early defeats against Canterbury, South Canterbury and Counties Manukau to secure a creditable sixth out of 11 teams.

Southland bounced back with 3-2 victories over North Harbour and Tasman to make it into the fifth place playoff, where they lost to North Harbour 3-1 in a shootout, after scores were locked at 3-3 at fulltime.

Rheubyn Prattley, Haydon McElligott and Robert Dickie scored Southland’s goals in the playoff, but they were unable to repeat their success from the pool play match between the two teams.

The women’s team finished eighth in the tournament won by North Harbour.

Southland lost all three pool matches against Wellington, Waikato and North Harbour.

Their loss to Waikato was a heartbreaking 4-3 loss in a shootout after scores were locked at 1-1.

In their playoff matches Southland lost to Canterbury and Wellington, before a narrow 4-3 defeat to Tauranga in the playoff for seventh and eighth.