The weather gods were smiling on us on Saturday as we took to the pitch for Kinross Hockey Club's first ever club day. With four hours of hockey to play it was just as well.

The Kobras opened the day's events with a penalty shootout competition, first with running penalties and then penalty strokes. This gave our two goalies - Doug Lester and Kara Shields - a good work out to set them up for the games ahead, although it was touch and go as to whether heat exhaustion would set in by the end of the competition. You could almost sense the despair as the competition ended in a tie between Campbell Shields and Ollie Wilson and we headed for a tiebreak. Mercifully the end was then quick, with Ollie taking the honours.

This was followed by two closely fought matches between two Kobras teams, which had the coaches purring with delight at the skills on display. This was particularly true of the defensive skills, which proved to be well up to the task of keeping the fancy-dan players under control. The accolade of "top gun" for the day was shared between Ollie Wilson and David Leslie.

It was a tribute to the enthusiasm of club members that we managed to put out no fewer than four full teams for the adult competition - some youth leavened with experience, some experience leavened with youth and some hoping just to out-experience the others before the legs gave out. Not that this mattered a jot, because there was some awesome hockey on display and I think it's fair to say that everyone had a good time. For the record, the winners were Team White and the top gun for the day was David McIntyre, who seemed to enjoy being cut loose from his accustomed defensive duties.

While all this was going the fundraising was proceeding apace, with the backstage crew doing a roaring trade on the tombola, the raffle and the home baking.

By mid-afternoon, and just before it began to rain, we all headed into the clubhouse for food and beer and a little more fundraising - a coin-tossing competition for a bottle of vodka proved very popular, particularly among some of the younger members of the club who were egged on by their parents. Named persons have been informed.

Bob Getley makes one final bid to win his father the vodka

Bob Getley makes one final bid to win his father the vodka

In total we made £680 pounds, and that's after taking off £115 for the pitch hire. Huge thanks must go to Vicki for organising the day's events and to everybody who helped out, whether umpiring, running the technical table, baking, cooking, supplying prizes, collecting money, selling raffle tickets and all of the thousand tasks, little and large, that went into making the day such a success.

Believe me, this is going to be a regular feature of the Kinross Hockey Club year.

Here are some pictures of the action...





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