Most, if not all of us, will have at some point experienced an away game from hell. If you're unsure what I mean by this, let me explain...
There’s no surprise when playing at home, you train on the pitch, you know what’s for teas and you have set expectations regarding the changing rooms. With away days, especially when you’ve not played the opposition before, it’s all a complete mystery. You turn up to the meet time, there are ‘what if?’ questions flying around and there’s a certain buzz that just don’t get with home games. Off you go with no idea what you’ll be faced with and, if you’re like me, you play it down, saying things such as “they’ll probably have a sand-based and we’ll have to make our own sandwiches for teas.” As you can imagine I’m quickly told to “shut up”, or worse, and so I sit there and witness the excitement spiral out of control. By the time we arrive expectations are sky-high, I’m talking the Olympic water-based pitch, television crews, kit nicely folded up in pristine changing rooms, and a three course meal to finish. If only. Unfortunately the reality check sets in as you stagger out of the car park and there, laid before you, is possibly the sandiest pitch you’ve ever seen, so bad in fact that you can’t make out the lines. You’re hoping you’ve taken the wrong turning and what you’re looking at is just an over-the-top long jump pit, but no, grab your buckets and spades chaps, we’re going in. Who’d have known there was a beach so far in-land?!
There’s no surprise when playing at home, you train on the pitch, you know what’s for teas and you have set expectations regarding the changing rooms. With away days, especially when you’ve not played the opposition before, it’s all a complete mystery. You turn up to the meet time, there are ‘what if?’ questions flying around and there’s a certain buzz that just don’t get with home games. Off you go with no idea what you’ll be faced with and, if you’re like me, you play it down, saying things such as “they’ll probably have a sand-based and we’ll have to make our own sandwiches for teas.” As you can imagine I’m quickly told to “shut up”, or worse, and so I sit there and witness the excitement spiral out of control. By the time we arrive expectations are sky-high, I’m talking the Olympic water-based pitch, television crews, kit nicely folded up in pristine changing rooms, and a three course meal to finish. If only. Unfortunately the reality check sets in as you stagger out of the car park and there, laid before you, is possibly the sandiest pitch you’ve ever seen, so bad in fact that you can’t make out the lines. You’re hoping you’ve taken the wrong turning and what you’re looking at is just an over-the-top long jump pit, but no, grab your buckets and spades chaps, we’re going in. Who’d have known there was a beach so far in-land?!
Begrudgingly you warm-up and the game gets underway. Seventy
painful minutes later you come off the ‘pitch’ wondering how you managed to
lose to a team that had nothing but an aerial chucker and a quick forward. The
problem when you're not used to a really sandy pitch, is that it's difficult to execute the slick, passing game you’ve been coached to play. It
should be relatively simple though, increase the ball-speed. Why then, does the
slow, sticky pitch cause some of your team mates to go into meltdown and resort
to dribbling?! That makes about as much sense as someone deciding to wear Crocs
in an attempt to be fashionable ------->
Having lost to a team with next to no hockey ability, your
weekend is quickly becoming a write-off, in fact some of your team look like
they’re already suffering from ‘Sunday evening syndrome’, all hope now rests on
the teas. You follow one of the opposition to their club house, usually a
social club that appears, from the outside at least, to have been unoccupied
since the 1950s. It’s not looking good, and as you walk inside any chance of
salvation goes down the toilet, as on the table in the corner of the room lay
the ingredients from what would make for a truly uninspiring episode of ‘Ready
Steady Cook’.
READY, STEADY... oh.
Of course this is a worst case scenario, you’d have to be
particularly unlucky to experience the whole lot in one outing. Unfortunately
not all of what I’ve said is an over-exaggeration, there are still too many
sand-based pitches dotted around the country that are impeding the progression
of hockey as a sport. If you predominantly play on a sand-based then get together
and think about how to improve the facilities at your club. The only benefit of a sand-based pitch, is that training gets cancelled when the weather's bad... Is that worth the misery of playing crap hockey week in week out?! I don't think so.
Cheers,
Charlie
Cheers,
Charlie
