The West Herts Hockey Club centenary year was given a shinier edge at the weekend as the men’s indoor squad took top spot in NHL Division Two, securing promotion back to Division One in the 2022/23 season.

Indoor hockey has been severely disrupted by the Covid pandemic, but has been back in full swing this season, with the National Finals at the Copperbox Arena on January 30.

Herts opened the weekend with a narrow defeat to Trojans, but rallied in their second game to defeat Ipswich 8-4. On Sunday they hammered Belper 10-4 to ensure a good goal difference.

An incredibly close contest saw four teams finish on seven points, and the fate of the championship see-sawed to-and-fro during the last game on Sunday, with Stags only being confirmed as champions with six seconds remaining in that game, which the Herts team were experiencing as spectators.

Prior to that, in Stags’ final game against long-standing rivals Oxted, they were 8-2 down with only a quarter of an hour remaining. Up to that point Herts hadn’t looked like producing the kind of solidity needed to work their way into a winning position, but remarkably they conjured up six unanswered goals to level the game with six minutes remaining, but the real heroic moment came when Simon Walker saved a goal-bound flick in the final seconds of the match to cement a golden point.

In the run up to the tournament, coach Steve Sieff had ensured a testing week as he tried to secure a keeper for the team; stalwart indoor minder Dave Soulsby was away on England trials, and the stand-in that had been negotiated from St Albans came down with Covid on the Wednesday.

As a last resort Sieff had to register newly arrived South African Ryan Whitehurst, something which proved to be far from a formality when England Hockey demanded permission from South Africa’s hockey administration that Whitehurst was free to play. This was achieved with hours to spare, leaving Sieff just the task of arranging a match-day manager to replace the arranged player who was selected for the Club’s Masters team at short notice.

Taking a place in Division One confirms that Herts are the premier indoor side in the East Region, the culmination of many years of hard work to fulfil Sieff’s vision when the club recommitted to indoor more than ten years ago.