Le hockey féminin en Grande-Bretagne

Photo: Gill Barton -- Great Britain Goalie

I would like to thank Ray Barton (Ray_Barton@ccm.isw.intel.com) and Roger Deason for providing some of the information that is in this file. Ray Barton is the head coach of the Swindon Topcats Women's hockey team and Roger Deason is the Romford Nighthawks Women's hockey team programme editor.

International Hockey

Great Britain currently competes in the European B Championship. Great Britain placed seventh at the 1995 European B Championship which was held in Denmark from March 27-31, 1995. Great Britain placed eighth at the 1996 European B Championship that was held in Slovakia from March 11-17, 1996.

Here is a link that provides the results of all games played by the Great Britain Women's National team.

More detailed information about Great Britain's results at the European B Championships is provided below. Here is a link to the 1995 Great Britain roster and the 1996 Great Britain roster.

1995 European B Pool (in Denmark) (March 27-31)
1996 European B Pool (in Slovakia) (March 11-17)
1997 European B Pool

Here are a few links provided by Ray Barton and Pete Dowling, formerly of the Guildford Lightning:

1996 European B Championship

Great Britain placed eighth at the 1996 European B Championship that was held from March 11-17th 1996 in Slovakia.

Scores for Great Britain

Date   Time  Teams                         Result
960312 17:00 Denmark -v- Great Britain     5:0 (0:0, 3:0, 2:0)
960313 17:30 Czech Rep. -v- Great Britain  7:1 (1:0, 0:1, 6:0)
960315 16:00 Great Britain -v- Netherlands 1:7 (1:1, 0:2, 0:4)
960316 11:00 Great Britain -v- Kazachstan  4:5 (2:1, 1:2, 1:1, 0:1) OT

Final Placings

Denmark
Latvia
Czech Republic
Slovakia
France
Netherlands
Kazachstan

Great Britain

The remainder of this page contains information on women's hockey within Great Britain.

Information from the English Ice Hockey Association (EIHA)

General Women's Hockey Info

The biggest problem the sport has here is the lack of players. In the whole country there were only 338 female players registered to play hockey in Great Britain during the 1994-95 season. There are currently no Scottish teams and only one Welsh team. The second biggest problem would be the poor ice time the teams are allocated for training.

The National league only began in the 80's. Since then the dominant team has been the now defunct Oxford City Rockets. They were champions for 5 consecutive seasons before folding due to a lack of players. They were champions in 1991. Third were Streatham Strikers and fourth the Dundee Royals. The Dundee Royals have folded subsequently due to a lack of players. Streatham still has a women's team, but it is now a recreational team. Both Steatham and Oxford had a few key players tempted away by the new Guildford team and folded. Oxford City Zodiacs keep the flame alive in Oxford but women's hockey is no more at the other two. At least one other championship winning team, Peterborough Ravens, have also since died. There are currently rumours that one of last years top teams are about to lose two or three key players, we shall see.

A dedicated few really do keep the sport alive in this country and they deserve a lot of respect for their effort. Sadly though until the organisation improves there is little chance of the sport really growing. One time last year a friend of mine was due to guest for Solihull, about 2.5 hours drive, in a 6.00 face off. At 1.00 they were unable to tell her when face off would be, 6.00pm or 11.00pm!

The poor ice times which are allocated to the women's teams is definitely a problem which hinders the sport. You would be considered lucky if you had an icetime of 7:30 am! With honourable exceptions, womens teams here tend to get approx 11:00pm-1:00am! The worst I have heard of was Streatham who used to get those times on Friday nights. Bye bye social life. Netminders are able to ice with any teams they like, so can often get extra time. The U14's (under 14's) normally play with the junior boys team but at 14 can no longer play with boys and must switch to women's hockey.

The best chance for the sport comes in the opening of new, by GB standards, super rinks at Manchester and Newcastle. This is what happened at Sheffield. Their mens team once got gates of 300 tops, now they can get 9000. As hockey got a high profile women started wanting to play and Sheffield Shadows were born. They now have a waiting list of players wanting to join. We need this to happen in the other cities really if the sport is really to ever establish itself as a respectable sport for women to play.

Social History of Women's Hockey

Womens hockey in Great Britain was initially an upper class sport. The only participants were upper class ladies who learnt to play whilst at finishing school in Switzerland! There were only a handful of teams in the country. The social base changed after world war two when skating boomed in GB however there were still only a handful of teams. The players now tended to be local ladies as opposed to the upper classes. The majority of players today are working or middle class. National leagues began here in the early 80's. Believe it or not the sport is currently quite strong in GB (in terms of players, teams, etc -- not ability) compared to its historical position. It has still got a long way to go though.

University Hockey in the UK

There are two varsity hockey teams that compete in the United Kingdom. These teams are the Oxford University and the Cambridge University. At the end of the season, these two teams play a championship game to determine varsity supremacy in the UK. On March 9th, 1997 Oxford University defeated Cambridge University by a score of 7-3 at Stevenage to claim the 1997 championship. Further details about this game are provided on Nonie Dodwell's page.

British Women's Leagues

Some of the information in this section was provided by the England Ice Hockey Association (EIHA) on their women's hockey page. The remainder was provided by Franco Beffa (francobeffa@bluewin.ch) of Switzerland.

League Structure

League Results

Great Britain Player Profiles

If anyone has information about other women hockey players in Great Britain, please email it to me and I'll include it here.

Emma Bowles, goalie

Emma Bowles was the GB keeper during the late 80s and early 90s. She was the first women to dress for a top men's team. Emma Bowles played one period for Oxford (vs Solihull) in 1981. Oxford had forgotten to tell their team there was a game and Emma was at the rink due to a women's match. The first keeper gave up exhausted after two periods as Oxford lost 50-0. Emma played the third period.

Emma played for the Oxford women's team when they won their six consecutive titles, though I'm not sure if she played in the first two seasons. Last season she won another championship with Sunderland.