T&T in­ter­na­tion­al Teague Mar­cano end­ed a two-match scor­ing drought as South­gate Hock­ey Club, led by for­mer na­tion­al cap­tain Kwand­wane Browne nar­row­ly de­feat­ed cel­lar-placed Ox­ford Hawks 4-3 in the Eng­lish Hock­ey League Di­vi­sion One South Out­door sea­son at Ban­bury Road North Pitch, Ox­ford, Eng­land on Sun­day.

How­ev­er, ear­ly on it looked as though the host would spring a shock re­sult when they took a 1-0 lead via a penal­ty-cor­ner, be­fore Jack Mid­dle­ton, 22-year-old Mar­cano with his 17th of the sea­son, and Drew Burkin all scored with­out re­ply for a 3-1 lead.

Ox­ford then net­ted a sec­ond item to trim the lead to 2-3 be­fore Charles Hamil­ton re­stored South­gate’s lead to two goals at 4-2, on­ly for the Ox­ford Hawks to net again in the late stages.

In the end, South­gate held on for the hard-fought win on the road to push their points tal­ly to 36 from 13 match­es at the top of the ten-club stand­ings, eight ahead of sec­ond-placed Ted­ding­ton while Old Loughto­ni­ans who they face next on Match 4 sits third with 27 points, four ahead of fourth-placed Can­ter­bury, an­oth­er for­mer club of Browne while Team Bath Buc­ca­neers is fifth with 21 points, lev­el with Sevenoaks.

The duo of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Bris­tol, and Cran­leighan both have nine points fol­lowed by Brighton & Hove with eight, and Ox­ford Hawks, with five.

Last month, Mar­cano scored a tour­na­ment-lead­ing 30 goals, 19 in the di­vi­sion­al round play­offs to lead South­gate Hock­ey Club to one of the two pro­mo­tion spots when the six-club Eng­land Hock­ey League Adult Su­per 6s In­door Cham­pi­onships Men’s Na­tion­al Di­vi­sion Two con­clud­ed at Rep­ton School, Der­by, Eng­land, on Sun­day.

Un­der the su­per­vi­sion of play­er/coach, Browne, who fea­tured for T&T in more than 400 in­ter­na­tion­al match­es, South­gate end­ed the Na­tion­al Di­vi­sion Two Cham­pi­onship with a 4-1 win-loss record and 12 points, the same as Bee­ston who fin­ished top of the ta­ble with a su­pe­ri­or goal-dif­fer­ence of plus-27 to South­gate’s plus-20, while Bow­don end­ed third with nine points from a 3-2 record.

Dur­ing the first phase of the com­pe­ti­tion, in the Men’s Di­vi­sion Two South round-robin se­ries, Mar­cano’s 19 goals in­clud­ed four beaver tricks to lead South­gate to the top spot with a max­i­mum of 15 points, five more than fel­low qual­i­fiers Guil­ford, and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Bris­tol.

Over­all, Mar­cano’s 30 goals tal­ly in­clud­ed 16 field goals, ten penal­ty cor­ners, and four penal­ty strokes, four more goals than Si­mon Egerton (26) of Bow­don, while Am­mad Butt was third with 23 goals.