Last season was mixed for both the ladies and mens hockey teams. Both sides, at times, enjoyed some great results, but both suffered their share of drubbings and dropped points. Despite these mixed seasons both teams are optimistic about the coming year and are determined to build on the positives from last year.
Dublin University Ladies Hockey Club (DULHC) have been one of Trinity Sport’s biggest success stories of recent years, evidence that the College’s strategy for raising its game was bearing some fruit. Two years ago coach Brian Scully and captains Jenny Long and Niamh Sweeney led the way as DULHC charged into the EYHL, Ireland’s premier all-Ireland league. After such an astoundingly successful season the year before, last season was always going to be somewhat anticlimactic especially considering the gulf in quality between the Leinster Division 1 and the EYHL.
The truth of this was borne out over a difficult season, with a few wins scattered throughout failing to make up for too many goals conceded at pivotal moments in games. Long put it best when she said in an email statement to The University Times in April that “in this league … the difference between winning two nil and losing 7-1 is marginal. We can play well and beat Ards 2-0, similarly we can play well and lose 7-1 to UCD”. Ultimately, it was results such as the latter, and a 6-0 defeat to Loreto in Santry at a vital point in the season, that decided the team’s fate, and they return to Division 1 hoping to put the lessons they learned into practice.
However, in a new introduction to Irish club hockey, the Irish Hockey League Division 2 (IHL 2) will offer DULHC a route back to the EYHL. It runs parallel to Leinster Division 1 – in which DULHC will also participate – and its winners will be automatically promoted to the EYHL. For the runners-up, a playoff against the ninth-place finisher in the EYHL awaits, with a place at the top table of Irish hockey at stake.
These extra games will be tough for Scully’s charges but with a strong base of players going into the coming year and the experience gained from last year they are in with a big shout to get promoted again. On the coming year, captain Ailish O’Neill sees the positives of dropping down. She says they want “to get back to scoring goals and winning games and get all the girls’ confidence up”. Undoubtedly an alluring prospect after such a rough season in the EYHL.
Dublin University Hockey Club (DUHC) had a confusing season. They put up some big performances against the top teams but often seemed complacent against the smaller teams, falling to a number of defeats in games they would have been hoping – if not expecting – to take points from. In an interview with The University Times in April, last year’s captain Rory Nichols was typically honest in his assessment of the team’s shortcomings: “Across the course of the season we’ve had big wins, and we’ve pushed the good teams far. But, I suppose we really let it slide against the teams we’d be competing against in the middle.”
In the end DUHC finished mid-table in Leinster Division 1, though they did have a good run in the Neville Cup before exiting the competition in the semi-finals.
Focus, then, will be key this season for DUHC. Getting a spot in the IHL2 for next year is a major ambition for the team, and that means cutting out the inconsistency that plagued them last season, and finishing near the top of the league. DUHC will be losing a hefty chunk of their team but have shown an aptitude for gelling a new squad. They will be keen to blood new players and try build a team around the cohort of players staying on from last year. DUHC captain Ben Arrowsmith summed up their mindset: “[we] definitely think we have the capacity and the potential to punch a lot higher in the league than we did this year… there’s only a few tweaks needed that will push the results.”
While last year was fairly disappointing for Trinity hockey both teams go into the 2018/19 season with plenty of optimism. Improvements on last year’s performances are needed but with a strong cohort of experienced players going into the next season, both teams have the capacity to do just that.
