United has gained the services of Park Royal Panthers Div 2 goalie Zac Roberts for this year and he will be given a solid workout once again.

At the opposite end of the field, talented Panthers Div 1 goalie John Leske has had an ordinary start to the year by his standards. Last year he conceded just six goals for the entire season, but in the past two weeks he has already conceded last years total of six goals against.

There’s no denying Panthers are struggling this year given the losses from last year’s premiership team and new players into the team this year. And it may take a while for the team to settle and produce the standard we all know they are capable of.

United lost 0-4 to Panthers in round one and put up a good fight for most of the game. If they can contain danger attacking players Matt Adams, Matt Lowe and Adam Conradi, it will make for a good spectacle but it won’t be easy.

Park Royal Panthers Div 1 women’s hockey team produced a good allround team effort to beat Risdon last weekend, and they will be favored to win again tomorrow night against the highly

competitive Clare Valley Cruisers side who are getting better each week.

Shannon Brown is the latest recruit to the Clare Valley team and she will certainly add plenty of spark along with the evergreen Natalie Sommerville who marshalls the defence in fine style.

The Saturday afternoon times of 1.30 and 3pm will attract plenty of attention on the turf with St Andrews to play Risdon in the Div 1 women’s game which should be a beauty, and it will be an exact replica in the Div 1 men’s game at 3pm (St Andrews v Risdon).

Cameron Joyce played his first game for the Risdon Div 1 hockey team last weekend and he showed his class to net a couple of excellent goals and his skills in general field play were outstanding. He will feature big time in this match along with CJ Ramsay who also played a pearler last weekend against Panthers to steer Risdon to a 4-0 victory.

St Andrews haven’t lost a game yet, and new coach Evan Garnaut would be delighted with the way things are going at the moment. But he won’t be resting on his laurels and will need a decent game plan for this week’s game to notch another early season win over the Tigers.

Key players for St Andrews in this week’s game will be Matt Storer, Duncan Brown, Byron Johns and David Monaghan.

The early afternoon game at 1.30 between Risdon and St Andrews is hard to pick a winner, but with the Saints girls very focused and working well as a team so early in the season, they would have to be favorites to win this week.

Brooke Smith has started the season in a blaze of glory. She will have a huge impact on this game.

But Risdon has the team on paper to win any given week and we all know they will fight tooth and nail to score the early season premiership points.

Elke Holze, Katina Athanasos, Jess Kelly and Tiah Pepe are all extremely talented hockey

players and will feature for the Tigers.

The pick of the games in the other grades is the 8.30 Saturday evening cross-over game between Saints (Div 3 and Wolves (Div 4). Don’t be surprised if Wolves get up in this one but it all pretty much depends on who’s in and who’s out. Saints have plenty of runners including the pacy Sheridan boys, so Wolves will need to come up with a clever strategy to combat this, however with about 500 years of experience between them, it shouldn’t be too much problem.

In closing, a friendly reminder to the teams that play the last programmed game on the grass fields are to bring in all bins, corner flags, move and lock up goals.