For­mer na­tion­al men’s hock­ey play­er, Kwand­wane Browne and Hamp­stead & West­min­ster made a win­ning re­turn to the Eng­land Hock­ey League Men’s Pre­mier Di­vi­sion on Sun­day last at Padding­ton Recre­ation Ground, Mai­da Vale, Lon­don.

Fol­low­ing a 13th-placed fin­ish in the Eu­ro­pean Hock­ey League dur­ing the first week­end in Oc­to­ber, Hamp­stead & West­min­ster with Browne serv­ing as play­er/coach fol­lowed up their open­ing round 3-2 vic­to­ry over Wim­ble­don, with an­oth­er close win, 4-3 against Uni­ver­si­ty of Ex­eter.

The 43-year-old Browne who made a record 324 ap­pear­ances for the “Ca­lyp­so Stick­men” in­door and out­door teams be­fore re­tir­ing start­ed in de­fen­sive mid­field and saw his team take a slim half­time lead thanks to a 17th-minute field goal from Matthew Ramshaw.

How­ev­er, at the start of the third quar­ter, Ex­eter scored three times in four min­utes cour­tesy of Matt Sim­mond, a 41st-minute penal­ty-stroke, Seb Ans­ley (42nd) and Luke Brown, two min­utes lat­er.

Fac­ing de­feat, Hamp­stead & West­min­ster mount­ed a fight-back with Matt Guise-Brown strik­ing twice in the 61st and 62nd min­utes to draw the sides lev­el at 3-3.

Af­ter see­ing Mannheimer draw lev­el against them in the dy­ing mo­ments dur­ing their Eu­ro­pean Hock­ey League Knock­out round-of-16 match, to end the 2-2 – with the Ger­mans win­ning the sub­se­quent shootout 2-0 – in Brass­chaat, Bel­gium, Hamp­stead then dished re­venge out on Ex­eter as Ru­pert Ship­per­ley scored in the fi­nal minute to hand them a third win in as many games.

With the win, record six times Pan Amer­i­can Hock­ey Fed­er­a­tion Elite Team se­lectee, Browne and Hamp­stead & West­min­ster im­proved to a max­i­mum of nine points, the same as Old Geor­gians, Sur­biton and Wim­ble­don.

A stand-out per­former for the na­tion­al men's team at Pan Amer­i­can Cups, Pan Amer­i­can Games, and the Com­mon­wealth Games, Browne has been at Hamp­stead & West­min­ster since 2016, af­ter start­ing his pro­fes­sion­al ca­reer in Eng­land with Can­ter­bury (2002-2003) fol­lowed by stints at East Grind­stead (2003-2006), and again at Can­ter­bury (2009-2016).

An­oth­er T&T play­er at­tached to the Hamp­stead & West­min­ster club is the na­tion­al un­der-21 men’s hock­ey team cap­tain, Teague Mar­cano.

The 20-year-old Mar­cano re­cent­ly copped the “Most Valu­able Play­er” award at the Ju­nior Pan Amer­i­can Hock­ey Cham­pi­onship held in Chile in Au­gust.

Dur­ing the tour­na­ment, Mar­cano scored six goals in four match­es, one be­hind tour­na­ment top-scor­er An­dres Pizarro of Chile, in­clud­ed a tre­ble in the 5-4 fifth-placed play­off loss to Mex­i­co with Joel Daniel, the oth­er play­er in the match for T&T.

How­ev­er, Mar­cano who en­joyed his first taste of ac­tion with Hamp­stead & West­min­ster last year is cur­rent­ly in T&T and is hope­ful of link­ing up with his team­mates next month or ahead of the sec­ond half of the sea­son in Jan­u­ary.

In 2019, Teague and his old­er broth­er Tariq, 25, rep­re­sent­ed St Al­bans coached by for­mer T&T in­ter­na­tion­al Dil­let Gilkes in the Con­fer­ence East League for a fifth-placed on the ten-team ta­ble with 23 points, lev­el with sixth-placed Spencer and three be­hind Old Loughto­ni­ans in the bat­tle for the fi­nal semi­fi­nal spot.

But de­spite his club fail­ing to reach the fi­nal-four play­offs, the younger of the Mar­cano broth­ers end­ed the sea­son as joint top scor­er with Cam­bridge City’s Gareth An­drew with 18 goals each, ten more than Tariq who fea­tured in all 17 match­es as well.