Chairman Rob Furlong insists Shrewsbury Hockey Club members will be out to have a good time at their awards night on Saturday – despite the Roman Road outfit enduring another highly disappointing season.
For the second year in a row both the club’s senior men’s and ladies’ teams have suffered the hammer blow of relegation.
The men’s first team will be playing at their lowest level for 15 years next term after a tough campaign spent almost exclusively at the foot of Bodykraft Midlands One.
And it’s been equally hard going for the ladies’ first XI who are contemplating life in the West Midlands feeder league after failing to halt their alarming fall from grace by finishing bottom of the table in Midlands Two.
Furlong, who also doubles as men’s first team manager, admits back-to-back relegations for both of the club’s senior sides represent a major disappointment.
And he feels Shrewsbury’s demise is down to a dwindling membership and the failure to attract and keep talented youngsters.
To try and remedy the problem, Shrewsbury have started to go into some of the town’s primary schools to try and outline all that’s good about hockey.
“Once you get in this downward spiral, it’s pretty difficult to arrest it,” said Furlong. “We’re finding it hard to get youngsters. We’ve got the set-up to coach them, but you can’t do that if you’ve not got them to coach in the first place. When we do get youngsters coming through and doing well for the first team, they end up going off to university.
“And apart from some of the lads who join us when they’re at RAF Shawbury, we very rarely get experienced first team players moving into the area.
“People like Jon Davis, Lyndon Boyden and Matt Sillence are still going strong for us but they’re all getting older.”
Furlong believes the key to Shrewsbury’s future is starting to have a conveyor belt of young talent to supply the men’s and ladies’ teams – but it’s easier said than done.
“The problem is we don’t have a feeder school,” he said. “I’m really quite envious of what’s happening at Shrewsbury Rugby Club as they have hundreds of youngsters there on Sunday mornings, and they have their own clubhouse too which helps.
“The ladies’ teams don’t get any input from Shrewsbury High School now as they play school games on a Saturday.”
He added the club were also keen to attract sponsorship help from the local business community to boost the club’s finances.
- See page 115 of the North Shropshire Chronicle on sale now.
