Whanganui beat Taranaki to win national rink hockey title

Dean Fitness (bottom left) says the team have learned how to manage the game, hold the ball and restrict the other team’s possession.

Whanganui’s premier men’s rink hockey team have avenged a 2020 defeat and claimed the national title.

They beat Taranaki 5-3 at the Rink Hockey NZ National Championships in New Plymouth - the same scoreline by which Taranaki beat Whanganui in the final five years ago.

Captain Dean Fitness said the Whanganui squad mainly featured the same players from 2020, with 17-year-old goalkeeper Mika Groves one exception.

Groves had been instrumental in the victory, Fitness said.

“He was outstanding. Our under-19s [men] won as well and he was also their keeper.”

Whanganui players had been coached by Chilaen Gonzalo San Martin Peña for the past 18 months, Fitness said.

A second Whanganui men’s team, River City, claimed bronze in the premier men’s division at this year’s championships.

“We’ve had a growing men’s squad, as younger players come up through under-19s and get to that 18, 19, 20 kind of age.

“After 2020, we realised we needed to change things up and invest more in coaching and bringing new players through.

“We brought Gonzalo over, and he set up more of a training structure and really improved our basic skills. Now, we have around 17 premier-level players.”

In 2019, the men’s premier team won the national title for the first time in 30 years, and won the Senior Team of the Year prize at that year’s Whanganui Sports Awards.

They won silver the following year but were off the podium from 2021 to 2024.

Fitness, who led the New Zealand team at this year’s Asia Cup, said this year’s national final was hard-fought.

Taranaki had players from Wellington, Australia and Spain in its squad, he said.

“They are a really strong team, and it was good for us knowing we only had local players - we are all workmates or brothers, sons and dads.

“A chronic thing with our team is getting a lead and then blowing it.

“What we’ve learned, with help from Gonzalo, is how to manage the game, hold the ball and restrict the other team’s possession, and we managed to do it.”

The Whanganui under-15 team, which is mixed, won the national title in their division, with the women’s team finishing fourth and the division two team coming fifth.

Fitness said San Martin Peña had returned to Chile but would return if he could find employment locally.

“The success of our top team is a credit to the whole training set-up, and to our second [River City] team as well.

“You could interchange a lot of players and it wouldn’t make much of a difference.

“Our skill level across the whole squad has improved heaps.”

Mike Tweed is a multimedia journalist at the Whanganui Chronicle. Since starting in March 2020, he has dabbled in everything from sport to music. At present his focus is local government, primarily the Whanganui District Council.