Our school team was unbeaten for 3 years at that moment and most of us also joined the youth section at High Wycombe Hockey Club , by 16 yrs of age I was playing school and Bucks county games during the week as well as Wycombe youth and senior teams on Saturday and Sunday. Our school team continued to dominate the the other schools in Buckinghamshire and life was good. I drank orange juice and milk, not reached beer at this stage.

The University Years

 At 18 I went onto Bucks University in High Wycombe and joined the Uni Team and eventually was appointed Captain and at weekends had progressed to High Wycombe first X1 on the left wing mainly due to my speed and ability to reverse stick hit, which was more luck than technique . Our Uni team was average but two of us got picked for South East England Uni/Poly team and traveled far and wide with some players that eventually got to GB status so standard was high and  we just enjoyed being part of a solid team of young guys good at what we did .  Of course it was all on grass those days so technique was about "predicting the unexpected" and a turn of speed was a major advantage. I had tried a few beers but mainly orange juice now with lemonade was my tipple. Ohh I had quite taste for hockey Club cooked teas after the match and evenings started to extend as girls started to be something to study, but without the beer, shyness prevailed.

A sliding tackle in a Uni game to stop a very skilled Shiekh cut my right knee open on a buried flint and after running (hobbling like a Goblin actually) straight out onto a dual carriage way dragging a flaying limb covered in blood with one red soaked sock and one white mud clogged sock, I hailed down a frightened lady driver with my hockey, crooked staff,  who immediately drove me to the Wycombe hospital where I immediately passed out to wake up in the morning after surgery, I could not feel my leg!

My parents were at my bedside and I drifted my left hand to feel my leg and brushed an iron contraption that I thought was a replacement limb! What a shock.

After calming down it was explained I had cut through the knee tendon and it had snapped back at both ends into my shin and upper limb and I had surgery to retrieve and resew the tendon back together and would be a year to relearn how to walk again and restrengthen the muscles again and then see if it could withstand sport once again... I was young and I was always an optimist and always liked a challenge and six months later I was back on the hockey pitch although bending the left knee to at best to 90% took longer and was extremely painful in a forced squat ... but hockey was back and that was all that mattered.

In 1976 I had a work placement year from my College Business Studies course and went to Vancouver, Canada  and as I was studying at University of British Columbia (BC Uni) and the Canadian Olympic Hockey team trained there and I was lucky to join their training sessions and stand in on some pre-olympic games . That was the year the Olympic's was held in Montreal and the first time ever it was held on an artificial turf "Astro", New Zealand won . Vancouver was amazing for it's  outdoor lifestyles and wow factor mountain backdrops and it's sea trimmed forests and beaches where one could ski in the mountains in the morning and bbq on the beach at Stanley Park Forest virtually in the centre of the City in the afternoon.   It's was amazing what a British accent and an ability to play Spanish guitar could do in Vancouver although that's another story !

On return to the Uk I got a job with a Canadian Timber Company with HQ in Central London but was soon transferred to Cardiff where our ships arrived form Vancouver with oil tanker size full of wood for construction in the UK. My first impressions was that Cardiff was back of beyond, Pubs were closed on a Sunday, they served black beer called Brains Dark !!, and women weren't allowed in most of these establishments especially down the docks. Still I joined the Cardiff hockey Club and after several hard training sessions I was trialed in the first 11 and made it as Left Wing mainly because no one else wanted to play that position although my speed kept me there for a season or two but as so many players were in the Welsh squad or GB squad it was a YoYo of a position between 1st and 3rd 11.

I was a committed Hockey player and never missed a game on a Saturday and enjoyed the old Club House at Sophia Gardens and late night sessions and "entertainment" and Bill Hunt's magic guitar rock solos, how we got home was difficult to recall but this was new era and shandies had turned to beer and girls had captured my attention , but Saturdays and New Years Day hockey sessions were never missed. I met a girl who turned up unexpectedly to watch me play a hockey match on Llandaff playing fields and she fancied my legs in those white socks  - What about the hockey , she never mentioned it - but we got married a few years later and the legs still have it!