People often ask how my overseas hockey journey started, and I always answer “I was dropped from a team and I posted on a blog”. Sounds a bit strange really but that is actually how it went.
The year was 2017, I was playing premier hockey for my club, and made a selection “NZ Affiliates” side. The team has nothing to do with the New Zealand Hockey pathway, but it was an opportunity for some decent hockey players to play in a tournament that then selected a side to go play in Fiji. Long story short, I scored a few goals and was selected in the team that would travel overseas later in the year. But before then, I had NHL trials. Basically trials for the best Men’s team in the region. I was always on the cusp, but never quite there. And I always thought the selectors had this prior conception of me simply being the “under 18 B kid” that could score a few goals. I made the squad of 23 which was promising. They take 18 to tournament. Was at every training, trained hard and thought I was doing pretty well. Selections came around, as I was driving home from university, sure enough read the email and we’re back to those school days of not being selected. I was upset but I knew the team was so competitive, the players were simply better than I was. They won the National League that year.
Sick of being the kid that was always dropped at home, I googled “play field hockey overseas”, and the website fieldhockeyforum came up. Unfortunately, this website no longer exists. At the time it was a place where players from all over the world could post to try and find hockey opportunities overseas, as well as clubs posting vacancies they had. I made a post, “striker from New Zealand looking for overseas opportunity”, listed out my achievements with a bit of footage from my Under 21 tournaments.
Within a week I had 10+ offers, mostly the UK, a couple in Germany and one rogue one from Malta. I was stunned. Halfway through a discussion with a German club I get a message from a technical director in Holland asking if I wanted to play in the Overgangsklasse, which at the time was the second league in the Netherlands. That was the dream right there. I immediately continued the conversation. The club was HC Zwolle, 6.5 fields, a lot of members, and they were struggling at the bottom of the table. The only issue was the season started in September, and I finished university in November. Thankfully the club was ok with me joining up for the second half in February 2018, and so halfway through 2017 I knew I was going to get to tick off the goal of playing hockey in the Netherlands.
For the rest of 2017 I still had a bit of hockey to play. I drafted to another association to play National League Hockey, and simply, we were no good. Nowhere near the level of the other teams, we got hammered in the first game 10-1. The 1 though, a cheeky lob over the goalkeeper from the boy who drafted in. Two games later, I did my hamstring. Unfortunate but the timing couldn’t have been better in hindsight. I figured out very quickly that I needed to work on some strength and be in the best condition possible before heading overseas.
The hockey trip to Fiji rolled around quickly, and we played games against Japan Under 21, Australia country, and Fiji. While it was a fun group with a good mix of old dogs and some young talent, it seemed that motivations for being there were very different amongst the group. While some went for the hockey, others went for a holiday with a bit of hockey. We lost to Japan under 21 in the final as quite simply, they were fitter and more organised. Back to NZ, one month before the trip to the Netherlands.
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