HOCKEY - The battle for bragging rights | Hawkes Bay Sport | Surfing, Rugby, Soccer, Football, Cricket in Hawkes Bay

ANENDRA SINGH

SPORT is often an endless human scientific experiment.

Among all the variables of venues, weather and gear is a control - something that does not change to accentuate the stark disparities in the cauldron of rivalries.

That is best reflected in the composition of teams in a competition each season, especially when pupils compete against adults.

Tomorrow's Hawke's Bay senior men and women's hockey finals in Napier is a case in point.

When the "seasoned" Napier Tech Red women and Passmasters men cross sticks with the youthful Napier Girls' High and Napier Boys' High teams in the afternoon, the Kelt Capital Hockey Stadium faithful at Park Island will crack jokes freely in anticipation of the results.

But it's a Passmasters' pre-NBHS match ritual that cruelly sums up the older players' predicament.

Team member Dave Smale enlightens SportToday: "We have a standing joke before we play them every time. We say that in 1980, they [NBHS] were 17 years old and today they are still that old."

And so that Groundhog Day scenario continues tomorrow for the women (3.15pm) and the men (4.45pm).

But wrinkles, poor eyesight, less pace and slower reaction time aside, the oldies do not always end up clutching the short straw.

Tech coach/player Dominie Cresswell says: "We can't match them [NGHS] in speed so our strength is to use a bit of cunning with teamwork and knowledge."

Tech Red's oldest player is Leanne Sutherland, 42, while their youngest is 27-year-old Sheree Hall. The non-training side of Tech Red (the Whites train), comprising predominantly mothers, teachers and police officers, were runners-up in pool play and went on to beat third-placed Evergreens 4-2 last Saturday.

Fourth-placed NGHS sent out ominous signals to the Reds when they pipped top qualifiers Tech White 3-2.

Adding spice to tomorrow's final is the fact that in round-robin play the Reds and NGHS have won and lost in the two encounters against each other.

The Reds have built their side around a core of six players - Cresswell, Toni Good, Sutherland, Leanne Marshall, Rhonda Claypole and Mandy Eddy - who played together from the time they were at Greenmeadows Primary and Taradale Intermediate schools.

"Yeah, we're the only ones who didn't defect. It's because we have loyalty and camaraderie," says Cresswell of her teammates who went through the different Hawke's Bay and New Zealand age-group teams and some of who are in current Masters teams.

"We play for the social aspect and beer afterwards but we still feel we can foot it with the younger ones," says Cresswell of the Reds who held the club title for 10 consecutive years but lost it in the final to Akina Blue on penalty shoot-out last year. The Blues cannot compete this season because they are in the Central League competition.

NGHS skipper Emma Hocking, 18, is their oldest player while Annabell Beachen, 14 is the baby of the schoolgirls' side.

Returning from the schools' tourney last week, the battle-hardened girls were nervous.

"But we knocked the top dogs off their perch so we're pretty confident," Hocking said.

For the boys, the build-up to the final has been a more in-your-face situation, considering Passmasters player and Smale's brother, Garry, is a maths teacher at NBHS.

"He's my class teacher so we're always at it and it's about bragging rights at the end of the season," NBHS skipper Willie Faulknor says.

"They are skilful but we're definitely fitter and we'll run rings around them whole day," says Faulknor whose youngest player is third-former Oscar Stewart, 13, and the oldest is seventh-former Liam Hornby, 17.

The telling factor in tomorrow's match, he says, will be their lethal penalty corner bracket that should yield a 2-0 result.

With an average age of 50, Dave Smale says striker Neil Faulknor (no relation of Willie) is 64 and their youngest player, Clayton Elmes, is 33, for Passmasters.

The team comprises 50 per cent of former Te Awa Scinde players who have been together since the 1970s.

Smale, Neil Edmundson and Garrick Collister go further back as former Colenso High school mates.

The other major contributors comprise former Akina players of Malcolm Sutherland, Phil Thomas, Elmes, Ross Barry and Andy Waretini.

NBHS beat Te Awa Scinde 4-3 in one semifinal, while Passmasters thrashed Napier Tech 7-2.

While the oldies twice had the wood on NBHS in the pre-competition rounds, it was a different story in their 4-1 round-robin competition loss.

"We played under the floodlights that night and the eyes of the old fellows are no good. This time, it's in the day."

It's just as well that Passmasters have a few physiotherapists among farmers, teachers and businessmen.

All said and done, talk is cheap so let the experiments begin.