It was a historic weekend for the Tigers Hockey Club, which became the first club to secure all five men’s Lower South East Hockey Association titles in the one season.
It all started under the Friday night lights of Blue Lake Sports Park where the Under 12 and 15 boys entered their grand finals as strong favourites and delivered in fine fashion.
The Under 12’s defeated a plucky and much improved Redbacks side 3-0 after a nervy scoreless first half.
But in the end Kade McCourt backed up his league best and fairest to guide the yellow and black home as best on ground for the match.
The Tigers Under 15 boys were led by Pattrick Robinson, Josh Heineke and Tim Kuchel and the trio were too much for the talented young West side to keep at bay.
Robinson was deadly from short corners to secure the win and best on ground.
The Division 3 men provided the upset of the weekend, with Strikers strongly favoured to take home the crown with the likes of Mat Boylan, Adam Coombe and Andrew Schubert showing their skills early on.
With an early 1-0 lead it was all going to script for Strikers, however Tigers had other ideas, scoring twice to take a lead into the big break.
Strikers regrouped and levelled again, but with less than a quarter remaining Tigers landed the knock-out punch when Ethan Carne beautifully picked out Mathew Hinton who calmly dribbled around the outstretched goalie to send the Tigers crowd into raptures.
After the premiership-claiming play Hinton was named best on ground for his performance.
Tigers and arch-rivals Cavaliers went head to head in the Division 2 men’s match.
Some fireworks were expected, but they never really eventuated thanks to the dominant performance by Tigers.
Lochie Nisbet was everywhere for his side, with brother Craig steadfast in defence.
Young star Robinson and veteran Mick Carne were dangerous up forward for Tigers to open an advantage.
Josh Aston gave his usual 100% effort for Cavaliers as did Daniel Harradine, but they were outclassed on the day, with Tigers taking the match 3-1, with Lochie Nisbet best on ground.
This just left the Division 1 men to complete the sweep and they did just that in a relatively one-sided match, despite West getting off to a flyer, scoring in the opening two minutes off a well-executed short corner won by David Vine and converted by Gavin Robertson.
Tigers replied with their own short corner goal however, with a miss hit from Brady Cooper finding a deflection from Connor Grant to beat the keeper to level things up.
From the second quarter it was a hard fought tussle with Tigers having a lot of missed short corner opportunities before Cooper finally converted a slick variation to take a 2-1 lead into the big break.
Tigers came out hot after the change of ends with Jarryd Burston sweeping in a loose ball from the spot to make it 3-1 after only a couple of minutes of play.
The fourth goal was a beautifully executed drag flick from a short corner to league leading scorer Aaron Mengler, while the fifth went to his battery mate Connor Bartlett shortly after to crush any chance of a West comeback.
With the game effectively killed off West scored a consolation goal in the fourth quarter through Gavin Robinson but it was Tigers who recorded the dominant 5-2 victory.
Coach Connor Grant was awarded best on ground for his dominant midfield performance to round off a great year for him.
