Saints end Jeppe's Aitken run

 

My sporting highlight of the week?  …… The Aitken Cup hockey final, without a doubt. St Stithians won it in a one-on-one shootout after the scores were locked on 2-2 at the end of normal time. In doing so, they ended Jeppe’s run of consecutive wins – six – and they took the title for only the second time in their history, the last time being in the 1970s.

Those who know hockey better than I do were saying that it was a high quality encounter, I do know that it was a thriller. Jeppe were clinical in the opening two quarters and went into a 2-0 lead before Saints pulled one back just before half time, they equalised in the fourth quarter and defended heroically as Jeppe went all out for the winner.

That led to the dreaded one-on-ones – a terrible way to decide a game like that, but surely one of the most exciting spectacles in sport. It was always going the be a lottery, particularly as it played out in the near-dark after the generator failed a few minutes into load-shedding.

Both sides missed attempts before Saints held their nerve to take the win.

The result was not all that surprising really. Jeppe scraped home in last year’s final between the two sides last year, and Saints won the school fixture a few weeks later. A significant number of that team are back again and St Stithians were the favourites going in. They were worthy winners in the end, if only just.

Earlier in the day Jeppe won the U16 and U5 Alan Monk and Boden Trophy finals, so their first team was going for the treble. They missed it by the narrowest of margins.

This year was the 50^th anniversary of the competition and Trevor Aitken, the man who the competition was named after, was there to present the cup, as was Alan Monk who handed the U16 Top 8 trophy to the Jeppe captain.

It was a great day and the good sportsmanship on display was wonderful. I particularly enjoyed the way the Saints players went across to commiserate with the Jeppe goalkeeper after he let that final goal through.