HOCKEY New England and Tamworth both brought home the spoils from the weekend’s State Women’s Indoor Masters Championships in Gosford.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
New England took out Division 3 while the Tamworth 1’s were crowned Division 4 champions.
Both teams earned promotion too, Division 3 for Tamworth and New England jumping up to Division 2 in 2016.
Katrina Bettison was a player-manager for the weekend of a new England side coached by Paul Eichorn and also containing Carolyn Beresford, Kath Czinner, Margie Davis, Angie Dean, Kaylene Osborne and Tania Parker.
“We went through the pool games with just one loss, to Parkes (4-2), who we played in the final,” Bettison said.
“We beat Grafton in the semi-final in a pretty close game, 4-3.”
They had accounted for Parramatta 6-nil, South Coast 9-1 and Bathurst 6-3 before edging out Grafton in their semi.
“Then we played Parkes again in the final,” Bettison said.
“It was drawn 1-all at full time. We had six minutes of extra time and got a corner about 40 seconds from fulltime.”
Bettison converted after the full-time bell to complete a wonderful weekend.
“All the games were tough.
“It was a great weekend that turned out to be awesome.”
Awesome is how she also described Eichorn’s coaching input.
Tamworth was actually supposed to host both the men’s and women’s championships but they had to be relocated with the issues that arose with the vinyl flooring during the State U13s’ Championships last year not going to be resolved in time.
The men’s were moved to Unanderra and the women’s to Niagara Park.
Tamworth sent two teams away.
Both had to play in Division 4, with Tamworth having not entered a team last year.
Hockey NSW policy is that new sides start in the lowest division.
The Tamworth 1’s dominated their pool, racking up big wins over Illawarra (3) (14-nil), Central Coast (3) (11-1) and Parramatta (2) 13-nil.
They did drop a game – going down to Orange 3-2 in their final round game.
Orange were in the same boat as them as far as not having played last year, and were similarly dominant in their games.
Tamworth got their revenge in the final, getting up 3-nil, having earlier dispatched of Sutherland (2) 8-nil in their semi-final.
“It was good to beat them (Orange) in the final,” Tamworth’s Michelle Aslin said.
She was one of their goal scorers in the final and said they didn’t really change anything.
It was more about knowing what they were up against.
Aslin and Tracy Donnelly, were in the Tamworth side that went away two years ago but for most of them it was their first indoor state titles.
They had prepared pretty well.
“We did a fair bit of training leading up to it,” Aslin said.
“We had probably six to seven weeks.”
It showed on the court.
“The team clicked really well,” she said.
They did, too, have a good side but the way they combined was probably the key.
The 2s were in the opposite pool and finished with two wins for the weekend.
“We had a great weekend,” keeper Sue Maher said.
“We were slaughtered in the first game but after that we either won or lost by one.”
They finished seventh overall in the division after beating Illawarra 3-nil in their play-off match.
The New England men also reached the semis.
They played in Division 1 and bowed out with a 7-1 loss to Illawarra (1).
Tamworth’s Isaac Farmilo, Antony Doolan, Jock Evans, Ehren Hazell and Will Turner have been selected in the NSW U18 teams to contest the national championships in Melbourne in April.
Farmilo and Doolan will play for the State team and Evans, Hazell and Turner the Blues.
