Saturday 27th Spetember was the 1st week of matches in the Slazenger England Hockey League. Brooklands Manchester University started their season with a 3-1 victory at home over Doncaster in the North Conference. Brooklands went 1-0 up early in the first half when Mark Batemen converted a Penalty Corner to put the home side infront. Doncaster then grabbed a goal half an hour in to the game through Colin Edwards. The teams went into the half time break with 1 goal a piece.

The second half however was dominated by the home side, with Summer signing Ollie Cooper scoring two magnificant drag flicks into unstoppable areas of the goal.

Brooklands will next travel to Durham to play Durham Uni on Saturday 4th October in a league game, they will then make the trip to Birmingham to face Birmingham Uni in a cup tie the very next day!

The bow and arrow has been traced back to 9000-8000 BC. Archery was developed in Asia and in the Islamic world. Ancient Korean civilisations were extremely good at Archery, Central Asian and American Plains tribesman were skilled at it on horseback.

This is the table overall for the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games:

Rank	Country	Gold	Silver	Bronze	TOTAL
1	South Korea	2	2	1	5
Men's Individual		0	1	0
Men's Team		1	0	0
Women's Individual		0	1	1
Women's Team		1	0	0
2	China	1	1	1	3
Men's Team		0	0	1
Women's Individual		1	0	0
Women's Team		0	1	0
3	Ukraine	1	0	0	1
Men's Individual		1	0	0
4	Italy	0	1	0	1
Men's Team		0	1	0
5	France	0	0	1	1
Women's Team		0	0	1
6	Russia	0	0	1	1

Peter Jones

Peter Jones is a BBC reporter and is also a Media Advisor for British Archery (GNAS) . He started his career, as a local and regional reporter, then he spent time with The Times before moving onto the BBC and British Archery. He is also into Football and Cricket and supports Coventry City.

Men

In the semi finals of the tournament Germany beat Holland on Penalty Strokes, with germany leading on strokes, former world player of the year, Taeke Taekama stepped up for the Dutch forcing a spectacular save from German second choice keeper Max Weinhold.
In the second of the semi finals, Spain came back from two goals down to beat Australia 3-2.

The bronze medal match was to be contested by Australia and Holland, the Dutch were still suffering from the defeat to close rivals Germany. They were crushed by The Australians 6-2.
The final however was a close fought game, Germany were World Champions and were hoping for another success at the Olympic Games. Spain were looking to round off a brilliant summer of sport with victory. It ended 1-0 to the Germans with Christopher Zellar grabbing the only goal from a Penalty corner.

GOLD = Germany
SILVER =   Spain
BRONZE = Australia

Women

In the semi finals of the Womens competition Germany would take on China and Holland would play Argentina.
Germany narrowly lost to the Hosts by 3 goals to 2. In the other semi final, Argentina crashed to a 5-2 defeat against The Netherlands.

The bronze medal match was to be played between Germany and Argentina. Argentina bounced back from the heavy defeat to Holland with a 3-1 victory over the Germans.

In the final Holland beat the Host Nation, China by 2 goals to 0, added yet another Olympic success.

GOLD = Holland
SILVER = China
BRONZE = Argentina

Sunday 17 th was the date for the second round cup tie between Ashton and Lindow.

Ashton were up against the League champions and morale was low going into the game however Ashton picked themselves up and went out fighting from the start.

Ashtons opening batsman (Hamzah Zafar and Connor Kelly) were told to keep it simple and not give there wicket away cheaply. However this was not the case as Kelly went after everything and hit a quick fire 14 which included two boundaries. Zafar was then told to keep it simple and hang around and not give his wicket away. This is exactly what he did and he lead from the front whilst batting with less talented batsman he survived for 14 overs before he was caught for a mere 19, whilst attempting to increase the run rate. As Ashton only had two specialist batsman on the day, Ashtons innings became slow and the rest of the side were all out for a under - par 62 off their 20 overs.

It was all left to the Ashton bowlers to pull off a miracle and bowl superbly well. Some disciplined bowling and good support form teammates helped Dave Grant pick up the first wicket of Lindow's innings. But from then on after Lindows batsman attacked Ashtons bowlers. On came Hamzah Zafar to try and change the trend, he bowled with consistency and accuracy and picked up Lindow's star batsman, Simon Burlison on only his 4th ball. He continued to bowl tight and was not happy when not one but two catches went down in the field off his bowling. This let Lindows batsman capitalise and they ammased the total in just under 14 overs.

All in all a fighting performance from the Ashtoners. And a great performance from David Grant, Dani Sutcliffe and Hamzah Zafar in their last ever under 15s game. Next season they will take the big step up into under 18s and I wish them all the best for next season.

Group A - men (19 Aug)
		P	W	D	L	F	A	Pts
Spain		5	4	0	1	9	5	12
Germany		5	3	2	0	12	6	11
South Korea		5	2	1	2	13	11	7
New Zealand		5	2	1	2	10	9	7
Belgium		5	1	1	3	9	13	4
China		5	0	1	4	7	16	1

Group B - men (19 Aug)
		P	W	D	L	F	A	Pts
Netherlands		5	4	1	0	16	6	13
Australia		5	3	2	0	24	7	11
Great Britain		5	2	2	1	10	7	8
Pakistan		5	2	0	3	11	13	6
Canada		5	1	1	3	10	17	4
South Africa		5	0	0	5	4	25	0

Great Britain and Pakistan will not be in the running for medals at this years Olympic games as they finished 3rd and 4th in their Group (B). Gold, Sliver and Bronze will be contested by Holland, Australia, Spain and Germany.

The final will be competed for the Gold and Silver and Bronze medal match will decide who will go home with Bronze. Whilst the country finishing 4th will go back with nothing.

These are the results from August 15th in Mesn group B

South Africa 0-2 Great Britain

Pakistan will play there next game on the 15 th of August they will purposely take a break on the 14th because of Islamic Republic of Pakistan's Independence day. The day marks the day when Pakistan became seperate form India. It also marks the day when Pakistan broke from British rule and became totally independant.

August 13th:

South Africa 0-10 Australia

Pakistan 3-1 Canada

Netherlands 1-0 Great Britain

August 11 th :

Great Britain4-2 Pakistan

Australia 6-1 Canada

Netherlands 5-0 South Africa

To this years Olympic games Pakistan took a team of 21 athletes to compete in the games, this includes, a 16 strong hockey team who are the favourites to bring back medals, other althetes include:

Athletics : Abdul Rashid, Sadaf Sidiqui
Shooting : Sidique Umer
Swimming: Adil Baig, Kiran Khan
Hockey : Salman AKBAR (GK), Nasir ALI (GK), Muhammed IMRAN (VC), Zeshan ASHRAF (C), Syed Imran ALI WARSI, Adnan MAQSOOD, Muhammed SAQLAIN, Rana ASIF, Muhammed JAVAD, Muhammed WAQAS, Rehan BUTT, Shakil ABBASI, Muhammed ZUBAIR, Shafqat RASOOL, Waqas AKBAR, Abbas HAIDER.

Hockey Team Schedule Group B :

Pakistan v GBR
Canada v Pakistan
Pakistan v Australia
Pakistan v S Africa
Netherlands (World Champions) v Pakistan

Newton Heath won the toss and elected to bowl on a very very wet pitch. Asthons opening batsman, Hamzah Zafar and Conor Kelly struggled for a few overs before Kelly was clean bowled. Zafar then unleashed a wicked attack on the Newton Heath bowlers as he hit a 6 and 3 4's for his side before he was caught out, whilst going for one to many big shots. In came skipper Dani Sutcliffe who played a great captains knock for 27 to see his side through to the end of the innings. Other contributers included Luke Walker (15) and Adam Searle (10). Ashton finished there 20 overs on 93 leaving Newton Heath requiring 94 runs to win and progress to the second round of the cup. But Ashtons bowlers had other ideas and opening bowlers David Grant and Dani Sutcliffe ripped through Newton Heath in the absence of Zafar who was not able to bowl to due to a groin problem. Ashton finished Newton Heath off eventually. The home side finshing with a dissapointing 55 runs. Ashtons bowlers did themselves proud after a rather lacklustre batting display from many of the batsman, the only positives being Hamzah (21) and skipper Dani Sutcliffe (26).