Belgotex Sport Fairmont Easter Hockey Tournament opens in style

The 2022 Belgotex Sport Fairmont Easter HockeyTournament presented an opening day that was fully unparalleled in excellence. The opening ceremony, which took place at the end of the day 1 games, showed once again that the organising team knows how sensational foundations make for extraordinary structures.

The 2021 FIH Rising Star Nominee Mustapha Cassiem and his brother Dayaan Cassiem, scorer of the second favourite international goal of 2021, both shared about their excellent journey and their Olympic experience in Tokyo, the undoubted highlight for several the young boys and girls in attendance. While the Cassiem brothers can inspire the future generations, its looking back at where we came from that was poignant to all as Brian Elgie, Founder of the Fairmont Easter Hockey Tournament opened the proceedings to an elated crowd. The singing of the national anthem was particularly pleasing as the impact of the Covid pandemic slowly becomes part of our history.

Of course before the tournament had been opened off the field, the action had already started on the field. With all games being live on the SuperSport Schools App the players were putting on a demonstration for both the live crowds and those unable to be at one of our various venues. With only the top team in each of the four pools progressing to the semi-final’s teams knew that like a first dance between a bride and groom, the first step was important to the ultimate product.

In terms of putting the first foot forward fantastically nobody quite embodied that like Sean Slater from York High School who notched up an incredible fifteen goals on day one, individually more than twenty-one of the teams competing in total. His endeavours have put York in with a massive shot at the top four. They will take on Paarl Gimnasium tomorrow in a battle of the two favourites with Slater looking to continue his prowess.

DF Malan are the early favourites in Pool A netting eleven unanswered goals in their two games so far, while Charlie Hofmeyer High School also made it a perfect start. Paarl Boys and SomersetCollege will look to take control of Pool C with the former showing superb attacking prowess while the latter were incredible in defence. Fairmont and WindhoekGym look set to battle it out for the semi-final spot from Pool D.

In the girl’s tournament it was the ES Academy that took their names and wrote them in the headlines the thickest and boldest on the day. The mostly U16 side were superb in shocking Stellenberg before consolidating that with a resounding win against Pinelands. They will fight it out with Pearson at present for a spot in the final four.

Hudson Park and St Cyprians played out a pulsating 2-2 draw that ultimately will mean that group C could go all the way to goal difference to decide the group winner at the end of the day. Somerset, Rustenburg and Fairmont added their names to the list of teams that opened the day with six points out of six. All three sides are yet to concede a goal much to the delight of a crowd.

If we look at day one, we really could categorise it as welcome. Welcome to the tournament, welcome back to the crowds, welcome to the class, welcome to the inspiration and welcome to the goals. We cannot wait to welcome you to day two as all forty-eight teams look to take it to the next level.  

‍