Thistles 65 entered a team for the October Fest on 18th - 20th October at Southgate HC.
For technical reasons it was a 'festival' not a 'tournament' so no trophies; just a bunch of experienced hockey players from England (named first as they organised it), Scotland (well, 4 of our number live in Scotland), Wales and teams local to Southgate having enjoying some competitive games.
Thistles played 4 games and scored 9 goals; our leading scorer was Jim Watson with 3, followed by new / guest Nigel Hale with 2 and 1 each for Rob Campbell, John Connaghan, Martin Fuller and Brian DeMattos. We played some good passing hockey at times in all of our games. Our only win was against Warlocks (captained by Phil Bell and also including Iain Lynch and Chris Heeps in their number). We lost to both of the England LX teams we played and to the Dragons 65's. Our game against England LX 65's gave the watching crowd an exciting game - particularly when we got to 4 - 4 and were pressing for more goals (unfortunately in so doing we left too much space for England to score and we ended up losing....).
The 'festival' saw the debut of new member Neil Jinks and a guest appearance from Nigel Hale (known to both Jim Watson & Martin Fuller). With work commitments and a late injury withdrawal reducing our numbers we were also joined for the later games by Ross Gallacher (there with a Celtic team in O60's) and Iain Lynch (as mentioned there with Warlocks).
The results were:
v Warlocks won 2 - 1
v LX 65 lost 4 - 7
v Dragons 65 lost 1 - 5
Report by Neil Ward
v LX 70 lost 2 - 5
Over 65's Team at October Fest in Southgate