Holcombe Men are looking for a third consecutive Premier Division win and their fifth in six matches as they travel to East Grinstead today.

Their match match at East Grinstead is followed by a home game against Wimbledon tomorrow (Sunday, 3pm).

By Lucas Ball

Barry Middleton’s side have made an impressive start to the season with wins over Reading, Southgate, Surbiton and Oxted in their domestic efforts – the sole defeat coming at the hands of reigning champions Old Georgians.

Holcombe responded to their Euro Hockey League (EHL) disappointment by immediately returning to winning ways over last weekend’s opponents Oxted, Sam Taylor scoring the only goal of the game to take his tally to two for the season.

A win could, in theory, see Holcombe go top of the table ahead of Sunday’s match against Wimbledon – though Old Georgians, Hampstead & Westminster and Surbiton would all need to draw or lose for that to happen, or Middleton’s side would have to win by a significantly larger margin than the other teams currently level on 12 points.

East Grinstead have made an inconsistent start to the season, winning two and losing three of their five matches to leave them seventh in the table, just three points outside of the top-six ahead of the league splitting come the end of Phase One in November.

The Sussex side have lost to Oxted, Beeston and Wimbledon so far, beating the University of Nottingham and promoted side Cardiff & Met, currently in ninth in their first ever Premier Division campaign.

Holcombe currently boast the joint-best offensive record with 18 goals in five matches and sit third in the defensive rankings, conceding just six goals.

Saturday’s hosts, meanwhile, are the joint-lowest scorers in the top-10, with only bottom-two sides Reading and the University of Nottingham scoring less than their nine goals. EG do possess the best defensive record in the bottom-six, but this is worse than all six sides above them in the table.

Holcombe Women are looking for their third consecutive win as they head to early-season strugglers Harleston Magpies on Saturday afternoon.

Nick Bandurak’s side have won their last two matches, both at home, against Sevenoaks and Slough to take them up to second place in the Vitality Division One South table, just three points behind leaders Surbiton 2s.

Holcombe were also victorious over Southgate on the opening day and are looking for their second away win of the campaign in Suffolk this weekend.

Deanna Ritchie will be hoping to continue her goalscoring form after netting a hat-trick for her first Holcombe goals against Slough at the weekend, with all three goals coming from open play.

New Zealand international Ritchie has been excited by the start Holcombe have made to their Vitality Division One South campaign but believes there is still more to come from Nick Bandurak’s side as they aim for an immediate return to the Vitality Premier Division.

Ritchie said: “It was great to score my first goal for Holcombe and it felt extra special scoring my first goal at Holcombe Park as well.

“It’s just really great to see the combinations we’re forming all across the field, right from the backline through the midfield and up to the strikers – there’s a lot of new players in the team but also a lot of girls who’ve been playing for Holcombe for a long time, so it’s been fantastic to see the connections getting stronger the more we play together.

“I think we’ve had some really good passages of play throughout all of our first few games but it was a great full team performance on Saturday. The third quarter probably wasn’t our best quarter of hockey but the fact that we could come back from that and still manage to win 3-1 was really pleasing.

“It’s awesome to be sitting second in the table, we’d love to be sitting in first but it’s really pleasing to see and motivates us each week to keep playing the standard of hockey that we can all be proud of.

“We’re definitely aiming to take the top spot.

“We want to keep building on our performances, improving our consistency. For the first few games, we’ve had passages of really good play but there hasn’t been a game yet where we’ve been happy with our whole performance across all four quarters so we want to build on that and improve our consistency across a full 70 minutes.”