Hockey One Round 4: Top-of-the-Table Chill v HC Melbourne Headlines a Huge Weekend
Round 4 of Hockey One is the one the whole league has been building towards. On Friday night in Canberra, the only two unbeaten men’s teams meet, and someone’s perfect record has to go.
Canberra Chill host HC Melbourne at the EPC Solar Hockey Stadium on Friday 30 October at 6:00pm AEDT (12:00pm PKT). Both sides sit on nine points from three games. Chill have the better defence, just six goals conceded, while HC Melbourne have the better attack, 18 goals scored. Chill edged the Tassie Tigers 4-3 in Hobart on Friday, and HC Melbourne won the first Melbourne derby 8-5 against the Cobras on Sunday. Something has to give, and the winner takes sole charge of the table into November.
Saturday brings two more games with very different stakes. The Tassie Tigers host the Brisbane Blaze in Hobart at 2:45pm AEDT (8:45am PKT). The Tigers are third on six points and look like genuine semi-final contenders, while the Blaze bounced back from two defeats by smashing Adelaide Fire 10-1 in Brisbane on Saturday. If the Blaze’s attack clicks like that again, Hobart gets a shootout.
Later on Saturday, Adelaide Fire host NSW Pride at the State Hockey Centre at 7:15pm ACDT (1:45pm PKT). This one is about survival for the Fire, who have lost all three games and conceded 28 goals. The Pride are fourth on six points after beating the Blaze and the Cobras, and Blake Govers keeps delivering from penalty corners. Adelaide need something, anything, to stop the slide, because another heavy defeat starts to look like a season slipping away.
Sunday closes the round in Perth, where the Thundersticks host the Melbourne Cobras at 3:45pm AWST (12:45pm PKT). Perth got their first win on Saturday, 3-1 away at NSW Pride, and now they come home. The Cobras are still hunting a first men’s win after three defeats, even though Abu Mahmood’s penalty-corner hat-trick in the derby showed they can hurt anyone. Perth is a brutal place to break a duck, but the Cobras have nothing to lose now, and that makes them dangerous.
So the table going into the round reads: Chill 9, HC Melbourne 9, Tigers 6, Pride 6, Blaze 3, Thundersticks 3, Cobras 0, Fire 0. Four teams make the semi-finals in December, so every point from here shapes that race. For our money, Friday night decides who the team to beat really is. If Chill win at home, they’re the early favourites. If HC Melbourne win on the road, the champions have laid down a marker nobody can ignore.
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