Welcome Back - September 2024

We’re now back in the swing of things for the new hockey season - with the first round of league fixtures for most teams, and a selection of Junior matches and tournaments taking place last weekend. A big thank you to all the coaches, managers and players for getting ready for what should be a great season to come.

Thanks to the hard work of many through the club, not least Abi, Jock, Shaun and Simon, Trojans Hockey Club has been re-awarded the ClubMark status for another three years. Well done everyone!

Memberships are due for this season. Please visit the Payments area in Teamo and either select the appropriate Membership Product, or set up a payment for the one that has been allocated to you. At the end of September we’ll start to remove people without memberships from Teamo.

If you are eligible for a hockey-only membership because you have paid full fees to cricket or rugby this September, or have any other queries, please message Elaine (juniors) or Jock (seniors).

Autopay has been launched and we’d encourage everyone to set it up.Payments for match fees will be automatically taken each month, but you’ll be sent a statement before payment is taken allowing you to dispute any incorrect payments. Please note that memberships are not included in AutoPay, you’ll have to pay these by Stripe or GoCardless. AutoPay also allows us to easily apply credits for umpiring so it’s definitely worth setting up. Click here for more information

We are aware that after setting up AutoPay, it can initially look like it hasn’t worked. Please give it 24 hours before repeating the process to avoid setting up multiple direct debits.

You may be aware we have discovered some Teamo bugs over the summer:

• The first meant that some of you were double-charged in previous seasons. Elaine has contacted everyone due a refund for double-payments so please check your messages as we can only refund people with active memberships or AutoPay.
• A different bug meant that some historical payments failed without notifications. If you are affected, you’ll see these payments in your Payments screen in Teamo. We are aware that you may be unable to pay these at the moment - please bear with us and pay the invoices when it’s possible to do so.

If you’re in need of new kit /accessories for the season, here are a few useful links:

We’re still on the lookout for sponsors to take the last few hoarding spaces around the pitch. If you think you or your company would be a good fit, please see the sponsorship page:

Sponsorship Page or contact Richie Roberts: sponsorship@trojanshockey.co.uk

After a few years hiatus, the club ran Back to Hockey over the summer - 6 weeks in June and July, open to adults wanting to get back into hockey after time off, or those completely new to the sport, trying it out for the first time. 

It was brilliant to see 12 - 15 people turning out each week, even though the weather wasn’t always on our side! The improvement over the 6 weeks was excellent, culminating in a full pitch game against a mix of Trojans Ladies 4s and 5s where the B2H team won 4-1! Congratulations!

From this group we have had 7 new members join the club across Men’s and Ladies teams, and hopefully more to come. 

Thanks to Becci and the helpers who came along to support the sessions and welcome new players. If anyone is interested in being involved in the future, let us know.

We’d love for you to come down and support our 1’s teams (and others!) headline fixtures:

Save the Date for the annual Christmas quiz, hosted by the Ladies 1s: 7th December

The hockey section AGM will take place on Monday 30th September, 7pm at the club. It would be great to see as many of you there as possible - to get a deeper look at the operations of the hockey section, finances and plans for the future.

We are looking for an umpire secretary to spread the load that the committee is taking on. If you are interested in taking on the role, please email Message Club Chairman

Your club relies on volunteers to allow  hockey to happen. We're always looking for members who can volunteer some time to help in the areas of managing:

• Memberships
• Fixtures
• Sponsorship
• Fundraising
• Press/media
• Umpiring
• Outreach to the community

“Where is my hockey membership fee spent?”

It’s a question many members ask at the start of each season so we thought we’d try to answer that.

For starters £140 (£100 for Juniors) of your membership goes directly to cover the costs of the main club, less than half is for the hockey section. The main club costs will hopefully reduce when the new clubhouse is completed.

The fees received by the hockey section cover:

• The pitch: £6K annual maintenance and it has to be replaced every 12 years at a cost of £350K+ …which is another £30K per year
• Coaching: most of our coaches are unpaid volunteers but they still need safeguarding certificates, first aid training, England Hockey qualifications, DBS checks etc and that all costs us circa £30K per year including paying our handful of professional coaches
• Match costs: over £12K per year on team entries plus the £4K to provide umpires for them for the 25 teams we run.
• ‘Keeping the lights on’: literally…..just the lights cost £5K to run now, even after we invested £35K to put in LEDS plus £2K on goals annually, plus balls, external pitch hire, video equipment etc etc



We work hard to keep our membership costs down and coaching quality high mainly through the 1,000s of hours our Trojans volunteers provide to the club. 

I’m very happy to speak with anyone about this. I'm even happier if more people are willing to help. I'm ecstatic, if people will look into the sponsorship options available and give any financial contributions possible, to support hockey for all players at all levels. 

Many of our costs are fixed, so recruiting more players to Trojans helps balance the fixed costs across more members so all introductions to new players are appreciated.

 We are different. How many other clubs do you go to that play at sports centres, colleges or universities? Once you realise the answer is the majority, you may then ask why? 

 You may well know that the future of a couple of other clubs have challenges because schools and the council are changing direction, and decisions are yet to be made on the future of those pitches and clubs. 

We own our pitches. 

We have a clubhouse.

We care about hockey.

Your club…elite or recreational…welcome back

And finally…

Did we miss any news? Website low on content? Did you spt any issues? Do you have a talent for copywriting? Think you can do better? 

Please do - email Message Vice Chairman if you want to get involved in keeping everyone up to date with the latest news, and show our club at its best.