Dalefield fight for premier survival

Twice winners of the Wellington premier division women's hockey title, Dalefield, will be fighting for survival in that competition for the first time ever when they play Northern United in a promotion-relegation match at Clareville tomorrow.
The 2007 season has been a far cry for Dalefield from the 2001 and 2004 seasons when they were the champion team but considering they lost 12 players from the previous year staying away from the bottom of the premier division points table was always going to be a difficult task.
Even though they didn't manage to avoid that scenario Dalefield did make steady improvement as the season progressed and should have the edge on a Northern United side which finished runners-up to Victoria University in the division two grade.
However, with Victoria already having a team in premier division they were not eligible to play in the promotion-relegation game.
Tomorrow's Dalefield line-up will contain at least six players from either the St Matthew's or Wairarapa College first XIs who were first and second respectively in the just-concluded Wellington secondary schoolgirls competition and also former Canterbury and Wellington representative Janeen Bruce, who was unavailable for much of the ordinary club season.
The Dalefield v Northern United match will get under way at 12.30pm.
Meanwhile, the Wairarapa College boys team made it a clean sweep for Wairarapa sides when they took out the Wellington secondary schoolboys title for the second successive year, beating Hutt Valley High 3-2 in an exciting final.
The match was locked at 2-2 with just two minutes to go when Tobyn Yeo slotted the winning goal for Wairarapa College.
Earlier goals were scored by Ryan Pauling and Dane Lett.
Their victory capped off a splendid season for the Wairarapa College side which placed a very creditable 11th at the country's top-ranked secondary schoolboys hockey tournament, the Rankin Cup.