Both first teams of the Steinhoff Maties Hockey Club are still undefeated after the first round of matches in the Western Province Grand Challenge.
Maties women are currently top of the log with 19 points after six matches. They won five matches with a draw this past Monday against the second team on the log, Somerset West. “The league standard has increased tremendously this year with more players spreading across the various clubs,” said coach Jenny King. “Maties have achieved good results, however a more consistent level of performance is required. That however is a characteristic of a young team and the players will continue to work hard to ensure more consistency next term.”
King’s team also played the last three matches without the experienced Illse Davids, Quanita Bobbs and Erin Hunter who are with the national women’s team at present. Lots of youngsters are getting exposure to first team hockey at an early stage this season. “It has been a huge learning curve for some with the additional pressure of Varsity Hockey and a full High Performance support programme. They have however really committed and with the hard work being done now, we will reap the benefits later.”
According to King she is proud of her team especially on the defence, but when it comes to retaining the ball the players need to work harder. “Retaining the ball under pressure and sticking to our simple go to plan is what I want the players to work on.”
The Maties men are also leading the league with six victories from seven matches after beating Pinelands this past weekend. The draw was against WPCC. For coach Neville Rothman the draw against WPCC is the one disappointing match in the league up to now. “The Grand Challenge has been interesting thus far; especially the last few weeks. We let ourselves down in the fixture against WPCC. We had many first half opportunities to take a substantial lead but we were not clinical and in the end that cost us the win,” said Rothman.
According to Rothman his players are dishing up some good hockey, but they do need to improve on their man-to-man marking dramatically. “We have been creating many goal scoring opportunities but have yet been very clinical or upgraded these into Penalty Corners,” he added.
The next League games for Maties are on Saturday 25 July against Vics. But before that the challenge of USSA awaits. The national students’ tournament is in Pietermaritzburg from 28 June to 3 July.
Tarryn Glasby