New season and new dreams for Newbury and Thatcham Hockey Club

Newbury and Thatcham Hockey Club continued their pre-season preparations with a 6-5 defeat at home to Swindon.

Goals from Matt Hall, Micah Cooke, Piers Cunliffe, Rob Haimes and Tom Hope weren't quite enough to prevent a first defeat of Newbury and Thatcham's warm-up campaign.

After a miserable season last term that saw the men's first team win just once in 22 games and suffer voluntary relegation to the South Central Men's Division 1 North, there is a sense that optimism has returned to the club ahead of the curtain raiser this weekend.

The side have won twice on the road in pre-season, beating Gloucester 2-0 and Marlborough 2-1, and new captain Lawrence McCabe is looking forward to the season ahead, which begins with a trip to Aylesbury on Saturday.

"I'm excited, we've had some changes in the side this year," McCabe said.

"We've got the opportunity to have a bit of a fresh start, the chance to build something that has some longevity.

"Last season was really difficult, we had seven draws, morale was not particularly high, it was tough.

"We're looking forward to getting back to it, we've reverted back to a formation we're more familiar with.

"We're focused on moving away from being a primarily counter-attacking side, I think we're going to try and control games instead.

"We've got a distinct set of principles, it won't happen overnight but we're making steps in the right direction, I think we could be very successful.

"Going into pre-season I think we had a few concerns but looking at it now I'm pretty confident, we'd like to be in the top third, I think that's a reasonable expectation."