University of Gloucestershire Women’s Hockey Club have endured a tough season, currently without a win and struggling to both score goals and shut out the opposition defensively.
Park Life Sport spoke to player Libby East to discuss their struggles and try to find out what’s going wrong.
East has been encouraged by UoG’s recent performances, “I think we can get a win soon, but we are facing some difficult opposition, when we played Bristol [University of West England] in January we had a very good defensive and attacking line, which worked very well, and it was a close game.
“We need to build on that performance, we know different teams will have different tactics and different challenges to figure out. But something we did at Bristol worked, so now we need to regroup and carry it into the rest of the games this season.”
UoG lost the UWE game 5-0 and despite East’s encouragement the struggles in forming a defensive structure and a coherent team are still prevalent in their performances.
East points to wider contextual issues rather than poor team unity, “I think the team is well-gelled together and we have good morale, however, we do have problems with some players who are unable to get to training.
“Where we’re unable to train as a full unit and only have part of the group, we struggle to implement a structure properly.
“We have gelled as a team but due to other commitments and several things, our inability to train as an entire group is a big issue to overcome.”
Managing the workload between a sports club, a university degree and a part-time job is a struggle that many university students can relate to and East feels that those unavoidable commitment clashes are the biggest factor holding back this side.
“I don’t think there are commitment issues within the team, but there are struggles with other commitments that are important, with uni, people playing for other teams and having jobs it’s hard to balance when training can be at awkward times in the day or at the weekend which is when people try and get work because they then have uni in the week.”
UoG travel to Plymouth and UWE in their next two fixtures before a return to the Devon coast sees them face Exeter in their final game of the season.
On a personal note, East is looking to improve on her game to solidify her place in the first team going forward, “I want to look to improve on my consistency with making training because that’s a huge part of how the team gets picked.
“Defensively I want to work on how I attack the loose ball and perhaps not be as apprehensive in those situations.
“At the end of the day if it gets smacked at me, it gets smacked at me but I want to work on regularly getting myself into those situations.”
