Congratulations to Bradley Bycroft, this year's worthy recipient of the ABC Hockey President's Cup for outstanding Club Service.
Bradley joined ABC Hockey's Maroon squad in the 2020 season as a relatively new player with one winter and two summer seasons under his belt with (in his own words) "No real grasp of proper hockey." He enjoyed the season as a new member to the club and gained invaluable knowledge on how to play the game with guidance from Tobin Blathwayt and senior players in Maroon such as Wayne Highet, Glenn Gilbert and Graham Thomson.
After the winter season he decided to organise an extra two summer hockey teams with Louie Lawton as well as his existing Division 3 summer hockey team. He roped together some 25 players to fill out two Division 1 teams. After some organising hiccups in trying to find players, the season went well with a fun atmosphere and some good games.
Tobin asked Bradley to manage Division 2 Maroon winter team in January which he accepted after some deliberation. Bradley says "This was a bit of a shock going from a slow/steady summer pace to everything happening within two weeks but once I got the hang of it the rest of the season was relatively solid despite a concussion and being injured missing half the games. I was lucky in that I played with a lot of the Maroon players over summer so working on the team culture was easy enough and we definitely had the most fun out of Division 2."
He definitely found the hardest part of the season was enforcing the first in first served rule as Maroon would often have 17-18 players and had to tell our best players sometimes not to play as we didn’t have space. (We hope to avoid this by running four teams next season).
Bradley says "The best part was the feeling when everything worked out for a game, we had a full team without having to sideline late repliers followed by a fun relaxed game with a nice W at the end."
Outside of managing hockey, Bradley is a full-time production worker at Rocket Lab, whilst studying IT part time and generally trying to get out to Woodhill / Riverhead to hit some trails on the weekends.
Tobin said "Bradley has made a tremendous impact to the Club taking a leadership role in bringing together men and women from different teams into mixed summer hockey, and more recently managing with a smile on his face, the Division 2 Maroon team which played good hockey with a great team spirit which reflects the very positive leadership attributes and characteristics that Bradley brings."
Bradley would like to thank club sponsors, ICT, MDL Civil and Colin Gibbs Solutions: two of his team were in the running for the Colin Gibbs Solutions Men's Trophy for the Golden Stick award placing second and fourth.
Bradley wearing the different uniforms of ABC Hockey
Legacy Maroon kit
New away strip in local derby
And in the Yellow and Black