Stirling Wanderers tournament report

Summer mixed is drawing to a close and a new season beckons. To put everyone in the mood for the rigours of the winter Stirling Wanderers laid on a mixed tournament this weekend, with three of their own teams, one from Carnegie and a group of (mainly hoary old) warriors from Kinross. Unfortunately we were unable to rustle up any ladies and so we had been promised some help from Stirling, but on arrival they sized us up and decided we'd be better off with an all-male team.

How right they were.

Dan was already crook, having strained his back at mixed last week, so he sat on the sidelines for the first game. The rest of the team - Gordon, Andy and David Mac, Stuart and Sam Smith and Monty - started brightly enough and were two goals up in fairly short order, but Andy had started to feel the strain in his back too and with Andy Marsh playing goalie for the opposition, we were pulled back to 2-2. Then Andy Marsh had to pop into work and we were another player down.

Still, with Dan and Andy Mc playing through the pain we clocked up a win and two draws, losing only against Carnegie, who had turned up with a very strong team. Then, with eighty minutes of hockey clocked up, your correspondent was looking forward to a well-earned beer, at which point he was informed that the tournament involved playing everyone twice. Another eighty minutes of game time beckoned! 

We started to understand why the organisers were so relaxed about our having an all-male team, as the legs of the old folk stopped doing what they were told and sticks were put into action as makeshift walking sticks. Teams we had beaten in the first set of games started to put goals past us with much more ease, and although we managed a good win against one of the Stirling teams it was all very hard going.

To round it off, the last game, against Carnegie, involved our conceding a hatful of goals in a torrential downpour. This was not a happy experience and hopefully was not an omen for the season ahead.

But despite the pasting at the end of the day, it was a good fun day, played in an excellent spirit and we were mightily pleased to end up placed third.

July management committee minutes

Minutes of the KHC management committee meeting for July are now available. Issues discussed include:

• conversion to registered charity
• insurance for casual players
• proposal to take on a paid coach and/or player
• future plans for club logo and kit.

Read them here.

Ladies Circle cheque presentation

Representatives of the Ladies Circle were at the KGV last night to hand over the first tranche of their donation to the pitch fund. Gail Nelson accepted a cheque for £750 on behalf of the club and another £750 has been promised.

Thanks to everyone at Ladies Circle for their generosity.

Men's fixtures 2015-16 released

The fixtures for the 2015-16 men's season have now been released and can be seen at Fixtures Live. Dan gives us the lowdown:

For the 1st team, there are 12 teams in total. Stirling Wanderers 1sts and CALA Edinburgh Colts have replaced Dunfermline City and Carnegie. Unfortunately, the last game of the season is away at Fidra (02/04/16)! First 3 games are away! Starting at Stirling Wanderers (19/09/15). Another interesting point is Erskine Stewart Melville have ditched their 3rd team and have replaced it with their 2s team! They played the likes of Stirling Uni 1s and Perthshire 1s last year so will be very tough indeed! 

For the 2s team, the league only consists of 8 teams. This does not mean you will play 14 games (once home and away). There are an additional 7 games (yes this does include an additional trip to Fidra!) that seem to have been chosen at random. First game is away to Peebles on 12/09/15 and the final game is at home against Peebles on the 02/04/16. Again some tough teams like Eskvale 1s but overall seems to be not too bad.

Top guy

Congratulations are due to Struan Hepburn, ex-Kobra and current midfield dynamo for the men's 2nds, who will be head boy at Kinross High next year.

Hope it's not going to interfere with your hockey Struan!

Club day: 22nd August

From Vicki Miller, social secretary

We are in the process of arranging a pre-season club day.  This is going to take place on Saturday 22nd August at Kinross Hockey Club. Please put this date in your diary!

The idea is to get as many old and new faces of all different ages and stages along for a fun day and night of hockey, socialising and fundraising for the club!  The event will take the format of a round robin tournament in the afternoon. This will be followed by some food and drinks at the club.  The EuroHockey Championships will also be on the TV which ties in nicely.

I will be in touch with more details in due course but please make sure you keep the date free!

New kit arrives

The goods ordered with our Sainsbury's Active Kids vouchers arrived today. We have four bags of balls, a wheelie bag and a whistle. The smooth balls were not quite as advertised, so if your heart was set on the wacky colour scheme you are going to be disappointed. No doubt some will be pleased though.

Many thanks to everyone who collected the vouchers.

Pitch in

From Gail Nelson, Club President

As everyone probably knows we are going to need to get ourselves a new pitch in the fairly near future. This is going to cost around £180,000 and we think we are going to need to raise about 20%, or £36,000 ourselves. That equates to something like £180 for each member of the club, including the Kobras.

To raise this kind of money is going to require a massive effort from everyone in the club.

A fundraising committee has been appointed: Gurdial Duhre, Richard Savage, Kirsty Dunn and Beth Robinson. Some fundraising activity has already started - we held a bake sale at the last Kobras tournament, there was a raffle at the Inaugural Dinner and the ladies did some more baking for the recent Over-35s district tournament as well as holding a quiz night. This means we have raised something over £1000 so far. That's represented by the little green square at the bottom of the pitch opposite. £36,000 will take us most of the way to the 23-metre line.

It's a start, but there's a long way to go.

At the first fundraising committee meeting, we came up with quite a few ideas, but we could certainly use some more, so I thought we'd take this opportunity to throw it open to the floor.

How are we going to raise another £35,000? (And yes, the idea of everyone taking their clothes off for a calendar has already been mooted.)

In the autumn our focus will be on members raising money for the club, but while everyone is away over the summer the Fundraising Team will still be working away, trying to raise money from the local business community. This is where we need you to pitch in and help us.

Do you have contacts in the local business community? Can you speak to your employer on our behalf? Perhaps your employer has a charitable giving scheme that we can tap into (funds can be sent to the KGV Management Committee, the charity that is our partner in this project, enabling us to claim Gift Aid).  Do you have friends or family who can help? We are not just looking for donations, but intend to offer sponsorship opportunities too. Do you know someone who might like to get involved.

Give us your ideas, give us your time, give us your enthusiasm.

We need everyone to pitch in. Let's get started now.