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Welcome to Old Georgians Hockey Club.
St George’s College has a long, proud history of producing top hockey players. An example of this is demonstrated by reaching the National schools finals for both Girls and Boys in 1990. As adults Old Georgians were forced to play for various clubs, so were spread out across the leagues.
Then in a pub in March 1995, 3 Old Georgians (Chris Jansen, Richard Aspinall, Tim Clark) agreed that it was ridiculous to see their mates spread across various hockey clubs. They decided to start a new hockey club and encourage their hockey playing friends to join. Being drunk or over ambitious, they set up the OGHC with the Moto “become a National League Club by 2001.”
Although the original objective to become National League was not achieved by the date set, the club did achieve this in the 2003 season, joining the National League in Division 2 and indeed winning that Division. This significant milestone and achievement was led by Iain “Woosie” Turner and Jonny “Stevo” Stephens, who together managed the 1st XI. April 2019 brought us promotion to the Premier League making our Men's 1s one of the top ten teams in the UK. led by Mike Hughes (Coach and Director of Hockey), Jonny Stephens (Manager) and Thomas Doran (Captain), this was an amazing achievement which gave OGHC (in with the long established clubs) with an ambition to be the very best.
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Along the oghc journey, Peter Jansen, father of Chris, Phil and Tony, provided sufficient funds to St George’s College to build an Astro pitch in 1989. As the OGHC Mens 1s rocketed up the lower leagues from 1995, Peter made this promise at the 1997/8 End of Season’s Party (drink flowed freely and many games played!) “If you get into the National League, I will arrange funding for another Astro”. Promotion was achieved, but sadly Peter passed away at the early age of 58, in June 1998. His wife Françoise, the boys Mum, kept Peter’s promise and along with another sponsor, Old Georgian John Lloyd, funded almost 50% of the additional pitch, allowing St George’s College to fund the rest of a state of the art, water based astro in 2006.
A key development in the club came in 2001, when we started our Ladies section. With the help of Emily and Becky Stather, the much needed Ladies section was set up. This helped balance the club; It also helped to bring some calm to club socials too!
Having achieved our objective of getting the Men 1st team into the National League in 2003, the OGHC lost a bit of focus and went through a roller coaster few years. In 2009 Noel Doran became Chairman, a new driving force and our main club sponsor. The new objective was “get the Mens 1s into the National Premier League, but ensure that all other teams get promoted along the way” The policy was that every decision must lead directly to this objective, removing negatives as they arise.
This included shutting down the dwindling youth section, and starting it up with 2 professional coaches 2 years later. Within a few years this section, Dragons, had over 250 youth players. In 2015 Steph Elliott, ex GB and current Premier League player, took over as Academy Director OGHC Dragons.
In July 2018 a plan was implemented to get into the Premier League, with Chris Jansen joining Noel as club Sponsors. This got off the ground with 2 ex GB players agreeing to join the OGHC, Dan Shingles and Dan Fox, with Mike Hughes as the new Director of Hockey. the club's Social Media presence and Mike’s marketing ensured that many similar high quality players joined them.
In the season 2018/19 the Mens 1s team went unbeaten in their league campaign and went on the win all 3 of their Premier League Playoffs against the other conference winners and the 9th placed Premier League side. This is an England Hockey record. old georgians hockey club is now a Premier League club and one of the top 10 clubs in the UK.
The rest of the club’s new objective was achieved in 2018/19 with 4 teams being promoted with all the other teams ending in the top of their respective leagues and Under Steph’s direction the Dragons won National and Regional leagues.
2 of the OGHC Ladies teams were promoted in 2019, this being the 3rd year in a row that the Ladies 1s team were promoted, placing them in the South League structure. This is the highest level that the Ladies 1s have got to in our history and is a massive achievement for the club.
