Easter holiday - Part 5 : Euro Hockey League

From Good Friday through to Easter Monday, HC Bloemendaal hosted the Euro Hockey League where the best 16 clubs from Europe competed for a place in the semi-finals to be played at Whitsun.

England were represented by Beeston (Nottingham), East Grinstead and Reading.

This was our second visit to this stage of the competition and we met up with a number of friends from the world of hockey.

Beeston were first up at 9.30 on Friday morning against Russia's Dinamo Kazan.

 

Former Sheffield HC junior, Ali Wilson - now a regular with England and GB - is one of Beeston's key players

 

Adam Dixon is another England and GB player in the Beeston line up

Beeston beat their Russian opponents 2-0 but were narrowly defeated 4-3 by HGC (Netherlands) in the Quarter Final on Sunday.

Reading went one better by beating East Grinstead on Saturday and then narrowly defeating Belgium's KHC Dragons in a penalty shoot out in the Quarter Final. This is the first time that a British team has reached the semi-final stage of the Euro Hockey League. 

Here are a few snippets of action from some of the other games

 Mannheimer HC (Germany) against Atlètic Terrassa (Spain)

 This game was decided by a penalty shoot out - in the Euro Hockey League, if scores are level at the end of extra time, 3 players from each team take it in turns to go one-on-one with the goalkeeper. Starting at the 23m line, the attacker has 8 seconds to score a goal.

 

Terrassa went through to the next stage - but lost their quarter final match to another Spanish team (Club de Campo)

We eagerly awaited the match between host team HC Bloemendaal and last year's champions, UHC Hamburg

 

HC Bloemendaal are captained by the legendary Teun de Nooijer - arguably one of the most gifted players to have ever held a hockey stick. He has won pretty much everything there is to win in the game - Olympic Gold Medals (1996 and 2000), Euro Hockey League Gold Medal (2009). He has also been named World Player of the Year on three occasions (2003, 2005, 2006) and has played more than 400 times for The Netherlands

De Nooijer started playing hockey at the age of nine, with his brothers in the backyard of their house. He joined HC Alkmaar at the age of eleven, and was selected for the Dutch under-16 team 2 years later. At fifteen, De Nooijer made his debut in the senior men's league with HC Alkmaar, and two years later, he first played in Holland's elite league with HC Bloemendaal. After two seasons wearing the number 11 shirt, De Nooijer switched to the number 14, made famous by Johan Cruijff, and has worn it for club and country ever since. The number was later bestowed on the signature stick he helped to create, the Dita Giga #14. 

 

UHC Hamburg also had their own stars - Moritz Fürste, UHC's captain, was a member of the German Men's Team that won the gold medal at the 2008 Summer Olympics and at the 2006 World Cup. He has guided UHC team to success in the Euro Hockey League on two occasions, winning the title in 2007-2008 and 2009-2010. He was named as the Euro Hockey League's Most Valuable Player in the 2007-2008 and 2009-2010 Seasons

 

 

In a tightly contested match, UHC took the lead ...

 

... but Bloemendaal hit back and won 2-1

 

De Nooijer's fan club show their appreciation

 However, Bloemendaal lost their quarter final game on Easter Monday against fellow Dutch team Oranje Zwart from Eindoven in a penalty shoot out.