The weather was very kind to us for the 1997 Festival and a full complement of 36 teams attended to make this our busiest Festival for years. We have a strong suspicion that the subtle change in emphasis brought about by the link with a Beer Festival had something to do with the eagerness of people to attend and this was the first year for a long time when we had to say “sorry but no” to late applicants.

We were pleased to welcome a strong representation from the Netherlands with one ladies team and four mens. This gave us the idea of staging two “Internationals” in place of our normal Festival games: patriotic fervour would be too strong a term but these matches certainly induced a high level of interest. Unfortunately, we have to report that Great Britain managed to hang on to the runners up spot in both matches with the teams in orange carrying off the spoils of victory. On a serious note for a moment, we were very grateful to all our visitors who joined us in observing a minute’s silence before these matches in memory of Paddy Selman. Paddy was a staunch supporter of the Worthing Club and Festival and was known all around the world as a highly respected international umpire and one of the great men of hockey.

It is not often that local authorities find themselves the recipients of bouquets, however, in 1997 the Worthing Council and their contractors did us really proud. The grass pitches at the Manor were in first class condition, reminding many of earlier times when county matches were played on Worthing’s grass. Others discovered that you do not have to play on Astro to get a good game of hockey and the injury count was remarkably low.

Turning away from the hockey for a moment, our first Beer Festival was a big success. On the real ale front, twenty plus beers were on offer in top class condition (even if we do say so ourselves) and the lager drinking fraternity were not forgotten either with eight brands on offer including special imports, Budwar from Czechoslovakia proving the most popular. We kept our promise to keep prices low with most bitters at £1.60 and even the premium lagers only £1.70 per pint.

With so many new features it was inevitable that we would make some mistakes which we shall not be repeating in future. We were short of umpires last year and we have taken steps to ensure that we have a full complement for 1998. The “rolling friendlies” which we staged on the Friday morning were fun but an organisational nightmare which got us off on the wrong foot - they have been given the chop. The Disco on Saturday night was more popular than forecast and we were a few tickets short - arrangements are in hand to avoid a recurrence.

Despite a few hiccups, all the important things went right last year and we are well aware that it is impossible to organise an event on this scale without something going wrong. All we can do is to ensure that we have contingency plans to deal, for example, with the situation when some idiot decides to smash up our loudspeakers for us on Saturday night!