This past Saturday, the Hockey Club had its annual First Years tournament. Having reached the final and failed to win for the past three years, we had high hopes for this year.

The first game was against Metanoia on the Astro turf. The Swarras dominated the whole game, and while serving up a master class of hockey, they easily went past Metanoia, emerging 4-0 victors.

On grass against Majuba for the next game, we looked a bit shaky, but managed to take the lead. They soon equalised but the Swarras immediately struck back and shortly after that scored a third, thus beating Majuba by 3 goals to 1.

For the last pool match we played Academia on grass, and while hardly breaking a sweat, the Swarras walked past them in a 5-0 victory. This meant that we went through the pool stages unbeaten and only conceding one goal, while scoring 12.

Up next was Helshoogte in the semi-final. Here it seemed that Swarras would again cruise to an easy victory after going 2-0 up. But an unfortunate own goal was scored, and the boys needed to dig deep to keep the score at 2-1. But they held on and this meant that our hopes of winning it this year burned brightly. We would face either Medies or Simonsberg in the final, but obviously a victory in a mini-derby match would be so much sweeter. And luckily as it turned out, Simonsberg won their semi-final and they were set to face us in the final.

The final was a tense affair, Bones had heart pulpitations, Brick almost had a stroke and I was gnashing my teeth. As it turned out, our worries were in vain. The boys did us proud, and although 1-0 is never a comfortable victory, these guys made it look easy. Nonetheless, we were utterly relieved and ecstatic when that final whistle blew. We had finally done it!

Afterwards we all celebrated with a nice cold Black Label (it is the beer of champions after all!)

Well done boys, you made us proud!

Skaap