As the league season draws to spare a few minutes to think about our band of whistlers who have umpired more than 230 matches this season - this excludes the wider academy tournaments, s well as games for Salford University and AGSB we also provide umpires for !

Every player should remember that without umpires that there are no games so our band of whistlers has done us proud as not once have we failed to play a league game due to no umpire. We thank all who have picked up a whilst for the odd game or our regular non playing umpires who 'blow' week in week out.

So this week we want everyone involved to take a few minutes to remember without this group of club members and supporters we wouldn't be playing.

Special thanks to Kieran Jeffrey who has co-ordinated all our umpires for all games and used influencing and charm to lure the most reluctant whistler to head to a game on a Saturday ! Thre is a vacancy for this role next season and if anyone if interested please have a chat to Kieran as its a key role in making hockey happen at the club.

We are also indebted to Nick Burnett who has continued to mentor, coach and assess our umpires and Nick is passionate about helping grow and develop all our umpires.

A huge thank you also to our 2017-18 Umpires: Pat Marsden, Tim Small, Mike Innes, Andy Foster, Andrew Entwisle, Richard Knill, Col Taylor, Shelagh Entwisle, Kieran Jeffrey, Nick Burnett, Matt Curnow, Jo Robinson, Leonnie Molloy, David Halkyard, Sarah Chancellor, Rob Judd, Duncan Brown, Ade Luther, Neil Hornby, Chris Young, Steve Davies (when in the country!), Nigel Stanhope, Ben Wright, Albert Marcano, Stu Nicholson, Kwasi Emmanuel, Will Reynolds and our Young Leaders and those working towards assessment including: Chris Young, Dervla Foley, Alex McBride, Tarun Sathi, Ruth Maddocks, Jackie Lord and Jo Nicholson - apologies if anyone has been missed off

We are delighted that our #GrowOurOwn Umpire pool continues to expand and we have a new crop of budding whistlers who completed the level 1 course last weekend, or are due to this Sunday. Congratulations on passing the course and good luck as you start your umpiring journey with the support of Nick and our other Umpire developers Malcolm Tucker and Andy Foster, So please welcome, support and encourage our newest whistlers as they find their feet and gain experience over coming months.

Good Luck to our latest crop and thank you for stepping up to the mark and getting involved in umpiring: Helen Cue, Claire McDermott, Caroline Small, Sarah Impey, Sinead Higgin, Ben Entwisle, Zachary Sebastian, Paul Keeler, Sarah Manson and Craig Burgess.

So we have grown our Umpires significantly over the last two years but we still need more people to give it a go as with many player umpires and overlapping start times its often really tricky to make the umpiring slots fit the umpire availability. The more people we have the more we share the load.

Thanks again to all our umpires, all players are indebted to them for making hockey happen !