#MeetTheTeam: Reserve Men

This year, we are starting a #MeetTheTeam series. Every month we’ll introduce you to a couple of our teams that take the turf every 2021 Winter weekend to battle it out for the win. This month’s team is the… AISC Reserve Men.

Author: Raju Bhana

AISC has not had a team in the Premier Reserve grade for four years. So, in 2020, when our Division One team won their grade we grabbed the opportunity to enter a team into this grade.

While entering a team into this grade is a great opportunity, it meant we needed to come up with a bunch of additional players for this new team.

Fortunately, we had a bunch of youth players ready to make their transition into competitive men’s hockey; some previous players returning and some players from other teams within the club to make up this team.

The season started with short warm up games at the Festival of Hockey on 11th April, which was the first time we got together as a team. Our first competition game was against a very strong Somerville team, which we lost 4 nil to. Our second game was against Western on ANZAC day, with scores locked 1 all and with only a couple of minutes left, the team kept fighting and scored on a fantastic goal on a counter attack to finish 2-1, our first win of the season.

On Monday 26th April, the Premier One team and Premier Reserve team met to have a combined session on team culture, goal setting and analyse a game on video. While it was a relaxed environment there was some great contributions made by all which should not only result in improvements in both teams, but also building better connections between the two teams.

Premier One team and Premier Reserve team at their team culture, goal setting and game analysis session.

Aside from hockey stuff, a couple of things to note that came out of this session was that all players that had not originally come from within AISC, felt that the culture, club and team environment was the best of any club they had played for. Something AISC should be proud of.

The Premier Reserve team trains on Wednesday nights, split with the Premier One and Division One team and also Thursday nights with the Premier One team.

Games are on Sunday’s, check the draw as we have quite a few games at Avondale this season. Come down and support this exciting new team!