T&T’s Teague Mar­cano scored five goals in his fi­nal two match­es as South­gate Hock­ey Club cel­e­brat­ed their pro­mo­tion to the Eng­land Hock­ey League Men’s Pre­mier Di­vi­sion with back-to-back wins to end the Eng­lish Hock­ey League Di­vi­sion One South Out­door cam­paign on Sun­day.

Hav­ing sealed pro­mo­tion with a 3-3 draw against the Uni­ver­si­ty of Bris­tol back on March 19, South­gate, coached by for­mer T&T stand­out Kwand­wane Browne who serves as play­er/coach trashed Sevenoaks 6-1 on March 26 led by a hat-trick from Mar­cano to car­ry his league-high tal­ly to 24 goals while Matt Ramshaw added a dou­ble, and Dan West the oth­er.

Then on Sun­day last, Mar­cano added two more goals to his sea­son haul of 26 in 18 match­es as South­gate bat­tled past Cran­leighan 5-3 with Ramshaw, Jose Hur­ta­do, and Karan So­fat, the oth­er scor­ers.

With the two wins to end the sea­son, South­gate com­plet­ed the cam­paign with 46 from 18 games, nine ahead of Old Loughto­ni­ans while Ted­ding­ton fin­ished third with 36 points, three ahead of one of Browne’s for­mer clubs, Can­ter­bury.

The pro­mo­tion com­plet­ed a re­mark­able re­turn to the club for Browne, who was serv­ing as play­er/coach for the team in his first year back at the club which was capped off by se­cur­ing their spot back to the top flight of the Eng­lish Hock­ey League for the first time af­ter al­most a decade.

The rest of the stand­ings see Sevenoaks with 26, Team Bath Buc­ca­neers with 25, Brighton & Hove with 18, Old Cran­leighan with 15, the Uni­ver­si­ty of Bris­tol with 11, and cel­lar-placed Ox­ford Hawks, with nine.

Com­ment­ing on the sea­son, in which he scored a com­bined 56 goals for the club in the Out­door and In­door cam­paigns, Mar­cano said he was very pleased with his re­turns af­ter com­ing in­to the club and not know­ing what to ex­pect while al­so cred­it­ing Browne for help­ing him to adapt quick­ly.

He added, “As a young play­er com­ing up in the sport I ful­ly be­lieve that Kwan (Browne) is prob­a­bly one of the best per­sons that you can have a coach or team­mate to learn from as his over­all pass­ing range and skill set is one that as a play­er you will want to de­vel­op in your own game.

“And dur­ing the sea­son, I sure­ly ben­e­fit­ted a lot from hav­ing him sup­ply­ing me with nu­mer­ous as­sists which in the end helped us to pro­mo­tion to the Pre­mier Di­vi­sion, a goal we set out at the start of the sea­son, stat­ed the 22-year-old Mar­cano, who plays lo­cal­ly for Malvern.

The T&T in­ter­na­tion­al not­ed that de­spite be­ing a new­com­er he fit­ted in well with the team very quick­ly, a key fac­tor he be­lieves helped him dur­ing the sea­son as well.

“Nor­mal­ly when you join a new team it takes a while to get used to the sur­round­ings, but I fit­ted in very well and this was main­ly down to the team hav­ing a core of young play­ers, and all of us kind of play the same style of game, so it made us eas­i­er for us to gel.:

Look­ing ahead to next sea­son, Mar­cano said he wants to con­tin­ue de­vel­op­ing his game and learn­ing as much as he can from his coun­try­man Browne, as well as his oth­er team­mates.

“In terms of our team tar­get, I do be­lieve we have the core of play­ers, and will some new ex­pect­ed ad­di­tions that will be good enough to tar­get a top-four fin­ish and not just make up num­bers in the di­vi­sion,” stat­ed Mar­cano.

Ear­li­er this year, Mar­cano scored a tour­na­ment-lead­ing 30 goals, 19 in the di­vi­sion­al round play­offs to lead South­gate Hock­ey Club to one of the two pro­mo­tion spots when the six-club Eng­land Hock­ey League Adult Su­per 6s In­door Cham­pi­onships Men’s Na­tion­al Di­vi­sion Two con­clud­ed at Rep­ton School, Der­by, Eng­land, on Sun­day.

Un­der the su­per­vi­sion of play­er/coach, Browne, who fea­tured for T&T in more than 400 in­ter­na­tion­al match­es, South­gate end­ed the Na­tion­al Di­vi­sion Two Cham­pi­onship with a 4-1 win-loss record and 12 points, the same as Bee­ston who fin­ished top of the ta­ble with a su­pe­ri­or goal-dif­fer­ence of plus-27 to South­gate’s plus-20, while Bow­don end­ed third with nine points from a 3-2 record.

Dur­ing the first phase of the com­pe­ti­tion, in the Men’s Di­vi­sion Two South round-robin se­ries, Mar­cano’s 19 goals in­clud­ed four beaver tricks to lead South­gate to the top spot with a max­i­mum of 15 points, five more than fel­low qual­i­fiers Guil­ford, and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Bris­tol.

Over­all, Mar­cano’s 30 goals tal­ly in­clud­ed 16 field goals, ten penal­ty cor­ners, and four penal­ty strokes, four more goals than Si­mon Egerton (26) of Bow­don, while Am­mad Butt was third with 23 goals.

Fi­nal Stand­ings

Teams*P*W*D*L*F*A*Pts

1. South­gate*18*15*1*2*83*33*46

2. Old Loughto­ni­ans*18*12*1*5*63*43*37

3. Ted­ding­ton*18*11*3*4*54*38*36

4. Can­ter­bury*18*10*3*5*51*38*33

5. Sevenoaks*18*8*2*8*36*39*26

6. Team Bath*18*7*4*7*34*36*25

7. Brighton & Hove*18*5*3*10*38*57*18

8. Old Cran­leighan*18*4*3*11*28*53*15

9. Uni­ver­si­ty of Bris­tol*18*2*5*11*20*44*11

10. Ox­ford Hawks*18*2*3*13*37*63*9