The Hockey Centre, in collaboration with Mercian Hockey are delighted to announce, “The Hockey Centre Vets Summer Series, consisting of Sunday League matches and Masters Summer Cup weekends.”

Full details, including the prizes that go to nominated development sides to increase hockey opportunities can be found on the sponsors Facebook pages, here and here.

With formal competitive hockey cancelled because of Covid-19, it has been vital to find ways of filling that gap and satisfying the appetite of the hockey family.

The Masters community is no exception and a collaboration between several of the long-standing Veterans (Vets) touring teams such as the Handbags, Warlocks, Puritans, the Welsh Dragons, Irish Exiles, LX, the Alliance and Llamas and established Vets sides from clubs such as Guildford, Trojans, Fleet, Epsom, Winchester and Spencer have created a programme of summer Masters hockey. With matches every weekend and Super Cup weekend events at the end of May and the end of June, the summer series has been born.

The Hockey Centre and Mercian collaboration supports the planning and delivery of the series as well as some team prizes for participants. But more importantly in line with both companies desires to support the creation of opportunities within hockey, the winning teams – both Women’s and Men’s – can nominate a junior team of their choice to receive a full set of Mercian foam goalkeeping equipment. The criteria for the nomination is that the team will be part of a developing junior structure that is not receiving funding from another entity, so the equipment goes to a truly ‘needy’ cause, removing a barrier to a team taking part in junior competitions because of a lack of equipment.””

If individual players or Vets teams are interested in joining The Hockey Centre Vets Summer Series League being played on Sundays at Lord Wandsworth College or The Hockey Centre Masters Summer Cup Weekends at Guildford HC, they should contact the Warlocks / Handbags Fixture Secretary, John Marriott at Ingrammarriott@yahoo.co.uk, or the Warlocks Hockey Club and Handbags Hockey, on Facebook.