Aggressive attacking from Leut Andrew Bewick and Sgt Paul Townsend, ADF team, saw the team conqure and bring home two gold and one silver medal from the Masters Games in Canberra.Photo by Micheal Weaver, Navy newspaper

Masters golden stick

By Paul Cross
ADF hockey players displayed the Midas touch at the recent Masters Games in Canberra to bring home two gold medals and a silver for their efforts on the pitch.

The Men's 40s and 30s both ended the competition as champions, while the women were pipped at the post for silver.

Teams organiser Lt-Cdr Brian Froome said this was the best result that ADF Hockey had achieved, surpassing the Newcastle Masters single gold medal.

"The final game of the Men's 40s went down to penalty strokes, after a nil-all score at full time, which we won 3-1," he said.

"In the Men's 30s, the team they played in the final beat them in the first round 2-1, but in the final everything clicked together for the team and they flogged them 8-2 - they just couldn't seem to do a thing wrong. This is not unusual with our teams; because we have people from all over the country it can take up to the second or third day before they start working as a team."

He said the women lost the final 2-0 but held their opposition out on several occasions.

"We had an age spread in the women's team from 30 to 47 competing against 30- to 35-year-olds in the other teams and when you are doing 25m sprints backwards and forwards it takes it out of you."

Lcdr Froome said the standard of the competition was high but because there were a limited number of teams playing the early rounds were played across age groups.

"All age groups played against each other so we had the ADF 40s playing the ADF 30s at one stage - which ended up in a draw - but up until the final game the ADF 40s were higher on the ladder and teams the 30s lost to the 40s beat.

"There were a lot of local Canberra teams - or at least teams made up of locals - who were used to playing with each other.

There was a very big representation from the Tuggeranong Hockey Club with four teams playing in the four age groups available."

He said the teams experienced some problems with a couple of player withdrawals during the competition because of work commitments.

"We had one player pulled out of the 40s team and called back to Western Australia to undertake pre-deployment training.

But we still had enough players in each to have reserves on the bench.

"Because we lost a player from the 40s team we had to move our oldest player from the 30s to cover the shortfall. We had written permission from the Games people to do that because he was only five months short of the age group."

As well as those presented with their medals on the day, LCDR Froome managed to obtain medals for all the participating ADF players who were unable to be there for the final.

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