Goulburn and District defies expectations to qualify for indoor finals

They had cobbled together a squad which had precious little experience playing alongside one another, and were short on subs to help carry them through a physically demanding tournament.

Despite the advantage of playing in front of a home crowd at Veolia Arena, local player Jake Staines did not have high hopes.

"We were struggling big time for numbers," Staines said.

"We had two guys from Victoria play for us, and I asked a young guy, Aiden Dooley to play as well. I thought we'd struggle big time."

The difficulty in finding players, he explained, was down to the impact of COVID-19. A number of Goulburn regulars had either contracted the coronavirus, or were close contacts of confirmed cases and forced to isolate shortly before the tournament began.

Missing a number of their usual powerhouse players who had turned out for Goulburn in previous state championships, Staines feared the worst.

But after the side's first outing on Friday morning against Illawarra South Coast 2, his concerns were somewhat assuaged.

Goulburn romped to a 13-4 win in the opening game, and followed that up with an 8-8 draw against Metro South West that afternoon.

Saturday's outings were equally positive, with another draw in the morning against the Central Coast before a tight and entertaining 9-7 victory over Nepean in the last match of the day secured Goulburn a semi-final place.

That, however, was where Staines' burgeoning optimism ended.

In the first round of finals on Sunday, Goulburn would take on Illawarra South Coast 1, a powerhouse of NSW indoor hockey whose players were often selected in the state team.

"I felt lucky that they didn't put double digits on us," Staines said when reflecting on the 9-1 semi-final loss.

"Illawarra 1 have always been pretty good at indoor, and they pretty much picked the NSW side out of that Illawarra side.

"When they pick the Open Men's side, or even the 21s or 18s, a lot of them come from Illawarra. They've always been quite sharp."

Goulburn's prospects in the final were not helped by the relatively small size of its squad, which forced the players to rely more heavily than usual on their conditioning.

"We were quite competitive, but it got towards the pointy end of the weekend and we were all pretty exhausted," Staines said.

"We had a few subs but nothing like all the other teams."

Illawarra South Coast 1 went on to win the tournament 2-1 in the grand final against Metro South West 1.

Having defied all expectations and made the semi-finals, Staines was pleased with what the team produced from the weekend, and he thanked those who stepped in to help flesh out the numbers.

"It was a good weekend, we were lucky that the guys from Victoria and Canberra helped us out," he said.

"Cody Jaffrey helped out from Crookwell as goalie, and I don't think he's played much indoor before. He did well."

The Open Women's Indoor State Championships will get underway this Friday, January 14, with two Goulburn teams expected to compete.

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