Now in Christmas downtime, let me ask whether anyone on the list is in
touch with hockey in the UK? I guess this would be England specifically.
And Scotland--I never heard of it being played in Ireland (North or Eire)
or Wales.
 
Heinekin sponsored a two-tiered league back in the eighties when I was
over there for a year in 85-85. The teams were limited to three imports
from North America per year per squad. And those opportunities provided
a nice way for college players over here to see Europe for a year after
graduation. I was atDurham that year, and I enjoyed my contacts with
the Canadians and one American who played that year for the Durham
Wasps. Taking turns, they coached the University of Durham club team
I played with. And anything they did was appreciated; we were hopeless.
 
Heard a rumor  recently that the rink in Durham has been torn down. It's
a shame if that's true. It was built after the war and it had that tangy
smell of brine and age in a decrepit old structure. Birds flying in and out
of broken panes in the windows up by the roof. I tend to use the term
hockey culture; this place had the hockey ecology I grew up around.
 
Anyway, to the question. Anyone abreast of English university club hockey?
I guess that means, in the first instance, ice hockey at Oxford (where
there's a women's team, too) and Cambridge. Schedules? Players?
Anecdotal history? It's a half-Blue sport at those places, so it's got
more than club status (but not as much status, or funding, as the full
Blue sports such as cricket, rugby, soccer). There's always some
Canadians and Americans playing for those sides.
 
The Cambridge hockey club, for which I played back in the late sixties,
is over a hundred years old. I went to a dinner in a downtown club in
Toronto several years ago to mark that anniversary. Talk about anecdotal
history (and myth). Both years I was at Cambridge Oxford cleaned our
clocks in the Varsity match.
 
But, in the second instance, I'm wondering whether hockey exists at any
other English or Scottish universities. As in Durham, where half our
players in 85-86 had trouble standing up. Reporters in the field?
 
Kevin