AUGUST proved to be hugely successful for Riverside Hockey Club (RHC) as the men’s team won the KZN super league division for their third successive season and managed to achieve exceptional scores with back to back wins over rivals, UKZN this month.
The RHC men’s first team started last week knowing that anything less than two consecutive wins over UKZN would lose their defending champions’ title. The final score in their match on Sunday, 17 August was (10- 2) to RHC after the team’s midweek 5-1 win over their close rivals which cemented them as this year’s KZN Super League club champions.
Justin Birnie, the men’s first team captain, regarded this win as a major accomplishment for the team. According to Birnie, RHC went into the league with many challenges seeing as their four international players, Taine Paton, Gowan Jones, Tim Drummond and Jonty Robinson, were scarcely involved in the league matches this season due to their World Cup and Commonwealth Games commitments.
Despite additional setbacks of losing other previously key members from the first team squad at the start of the season and a new coach in Iain Evans, RHC’s men’s first team showed the club’s depth by excelling in the 2014 league with their outstanding results at the end of the season.
The excitement for RHC this season didn’t end with the men’s first team though, as RHC’s women’s first team finished second in the KZN super league and the women’s second team finished third resulting in Riverside producing two of the top three teams in this hotly contested KZN women’s Super League.
Extremely pleased with their performance this season, Riverside Hockey Club’s Chairman, Wayne Philips, who was ecstatic about all the club teams’ performances said, “I am extremely pleased and proud of how well our men’s first team has done to win the league despite a really tough season. It’s also great to see half of the men’s first team being home grown players who started their club hockey at Riverside within Riverside’s mini and youth hockey programmes, a further indication of the quality of the hockey at Riverside’s junior programme. The ladies teams also had a fantastic season and the ladies second team performed beyond expectations by ending in the top four playoff and then snatching third place from previous titleholders Collegians.”
