NIGEL SI­MON

nigel.si­mon@guardian.co.tt

T&T se­nior men’s hock­ey play­er Teague Mar­cano marked his de­but for South­gate scor­ing five goals in their Eng­lish Hock­ey League Di­vi­sion One South sea­son open­ing 7-1 whip­ping of Brighton & Hove at the Brighton & Hove Hock­ey Pitch on Sun­day.

Dan West and Charles Hamil­ton got the oth­er goals for South­gate which is coached by for­mer T&T play­er and Pan Amer­i­can Hock­ey Fed­er­a­tion mul­ti­ple Elite Team se­lectee, Kwand­wane Browne who was ap­point­ed to the po­si­tion in May.

A new look South­gate was ea­ger to put down a mark­er in the fight for pro­mo­tion to the Pre­mier Di­vi­sion and were quick­ly up and run­ning with five goals be­ing scored in the first 20 min­utes, four for South­gate.

Mar­cano, in his first match for his new club, scored a quick-fire hat­trick with a penal­ty-cor­ner con­ver­sion as ear­ly as the fourth minute fol­lowed by an eighth-minute field goal, and an­oth­er penal­ty-cor­ner con­ver­sion in the 14th fol­lowed by a West field goal in the 19th be­fore Brighton & Hove got on the score­board a minute lat­er through Sam Rose in the 20th minute.

Mar­cano was on the score­sheet again in the sec­ond half to reg­is­ter his fourth and fifth goals in the 37th minute and 63rd from field goal and set play re­spec­tive­ly, on ei­ther side of Hamil­ton’s open play ef­fort in the 59th minute.

With the ap­point­ment, the 44-year-old Browne re­turned to South­gate, a club he played for in 1997/1998, af­ter sev­en years with Hamp­stead & West­min­ster, which in­clud­ed the 2019 league cham­pi­onship, while he al­so con­tin­ues to work as GB men’s as­sis­tant coach.

In April, Browne and Mar­cano end­ed the 2021/2022 sea­son with Hamp­stead & West­min­ster in the Eng­land Men’s Hock­ey League Pre­mier Di­vi­sion “Top Six” com­pe­ti­tion in the fourth spot with 32 points from 20 match­es, while Sur­biton end­ed third with 42 points.

Wim­ble­don sealed sec­ond place in the ta­ble and Eu­ro­pean hock­ey next sea­son with a 3-2 vic­to­ry over cham­pi­ons Old Geor­gians.

Former T&T international hockey player, Kwandwane Browne.

Nigel Simon

Mar­cano was on the score­sheet while Browne was in­flu­en­tial through­out in help­ing Hamp­stead & West­min­ster to a fifth-place fin­ish at the 2022 Ter­rass Eu­ro Hock­ey League (EHL) League Rank­ing Cup thanks to a 7-1 vic­to­ry over Three Rock Rovers in Spain in April.

In Jan­u­ary, both T&T men were part of the Hamp­stead & West­min­ster team which fell to a 4-2 de­feat against Wim­ble­don in their all-Lon­don Eng­land Hock­ey League Su­per6s Men’s Pre­mier Di­vi­sion In­door semi­fi­nal at the Cop­per Box Are­na, with Mar­cano scor­ing 16 goals in the com­pe­ti­tion.

In the oth­er Di­vi­sion South match­es on Sun­day, new­ly pro­mot­ed Old Loughto­ni­ans de­feat­ed Team Bath Buc­ca­neers 4-1; fel­low pro­mot­ed side, the Uni­ver­si­ty of Bris­tol went un­der to Ox­ford Hawks 2-1; Ted­ding­ton main­tained their win­ning streak against the 2021/22 run­ners-up Can­ter­bury with a 2-1 vic­to­ry, and in the on­ly Sat­ur­day fix­ture of the Di­vi­sion, Old Cran­leighan played hosts to a strong Sevenoaks side and was beat­en 2-0.

In the Men’s Con­fer­ence Mid­lands, St Al­bans coached by for­mer T&T in­ter­na­tion­al Dil­lete Gilkes con­tin­ued their un­beat­en run of games against the Uni­ver­si­ty of Birm­ing­ham as they shared the spoils with the mid­lands op­po­nents, in a 2-2.