Debut season for new Portsmouth Hockey Club a big success, insists coach

The club were formed last summer from an amalgamation of City of Portsmouth and Portsmouth and Southsea.

Though the Portsmouth 1st XI in 2019/20 was mainly drawn from the previous City of Portsmouth 1st XI, the merger has created a club with greater strength in depth across both men’s and women’s teams. And there are plans for more teams moving forward.

This season the club regularly fielded five men’s teams in the Hampshire/Surrey League and the Hampshire League, and the same amount in the Hampshire Women’s League. A men’s veterans XI also competed in the over-35 Masters League.

When the season was halted due to the Covid-19 crisis, Portsmouth’s men’s 1st XI were in with a promotion shout.

They lay in fourth place, two points behind second-placed Old Cranleighans with two games of the season left. And OCs still had to play runaway leaders Aldershot & Farnham, who had won all 18 of their games to date.

That was a better season than Wimshurst had expected, bearing in mind the team had only been promoted from the top tier of Hampshire hockey 12 months earlier.

The women’s 1st XI finished third in the top flight of the Hampshire League, just eight points adrift of a promotion place after losing only three of their 20 matches.

The men’s 4ths, meanwhile, pipped cross-city rivals US Portsmouth on goal difference to win the Hampshire Division 8 title.

And unlike the case with some grassroots non-league football leagues, the finishing places across those leagues are likely to count.

The Hampshire League will almost certainly be guided by the South League - whose structure they feed into - when deciding whether to null and void the season (as the FA have done with some non-league football) or work out league positions on a points per game basis (as the RFU have with their grassroots game).

Though the South League have yet to announce their decision, the East of England League have already revealed they will honour promotion and relegation. That makes it likely the South League will follow suit.

England Hockey - who oversee the top level of sport in the country - are unable to dictate to the regional leagues what decision to take regarding how they decide to finish their seasons.

‘We’ve been encouraged by our first season after the merger,’ said Wimshurst. ‘It’s been reasonably smooth, probably a few less problems than we thought.

‘The first XI have probably done better than we had expected. Our aim was to finish in the top five and we were fourth when everything stopped, so we achieved our objective there.

‘Now we want to move the club forward, we want to be able to offer hockey to as many people as we can.

‘We’re in a big city and we want to be a big city club.

‘We want to be able to run six or seven men’s and women’s teams, and we want our men’s first XI to be in the South Premier 1.’

There is some way to go before Portsmouth get there. From where they are now, they will need to win four promotions. But hope springs eternal that Portsmouth can bring back the glory days - the City of Portsmouth club were South Premier 1 champions as recently as 2001/02. They had previously been runners-up in 1995 and 1998.

Next season, the hope is that the ladies will be able to field six teams on a Saturday - a big improvement bearing in mind City of Portsmouth could only field two in 2018/19 prior to the merger.

At the moment, it’s unsure whether the men’s vets XI will still play next season.