“Kingston School maintained their unbroken record on their own ground by defeating Staines. During the first half, Staines pressed continually and scored three goals. The School forwards, on the other hand, did not seem able to play together, and only succeeded in getting one goal (Shoveller). At half time the score was 3-1 in favour of Staines and on re-starting, Staines quickly scored again. Now, however, the School forwards began to get together and played up hard to the end of the match, making the second half six goals to Staines’s two. Thus, the School won a most enjoyable game by 7-5. Goals for School by Logan (5), Shoveller (2). Goals for Staines by H Green (2), A Playford (2), Eric Green.”
Kingston Grammar School
Goal, E Parr; backs, J Bessell, T Walker; half-backs, H Doherty, J W Philipson, P Parr; forwards, N Nightingale, H Kershaw, G Logan, S H Shoveller, E King.
Staines Hockey Club
Goal, M J Allen; backs, H S Freeman, L Green; half-backs, Erle Green, H Blount, F Hunt; forwards, M Griffin, A Playford, H Greene, N Reid, Eric Green.
From The Times newspaper, 1898.
Reflecting on the match 125 years later
On 12 February 1898, a hockey match took place in Kingston, then in the County of Surrey now the London Borough of Kingston-upon-Thames. The match is notable for several reasons, not the least of which is for a school team to be playing a club side.
Bear in mind that this was barely two decades after hockey had started up as an organised sport and only two years after England had played its first international match. To think that a school team could take on and beat a club side speaks volumes for the stature of hockey at Kingston Grammar School (KGS), a situation that continued for most of the twentieth century.
In those far off days, a century and a quarter ago, Staines were one of the nation’s strongest hockey clubs. In the early 1900s they famously went several seasons without defeat. So, KGS were playing one of the best opponents around. The reason that they beat Staines can probably be found in their team list. Kingston may have only been schoolboys but their team contained two players in Gerald Logan and Stanley Shoveller (16 years old in February 1898) who went on to win gold medals at the London Olympic Games of 1908. They would go on to play for Hampstead Hockey Club who were one of Staines’s strongest opponents during the pre-WW1 era.
It is unlikely that The Times correspondent, or indeed anyone else at the match that day, would have thought that four of those playing would become Olympic gold medallists a decade on. In addition to Logan and Shoveller, the Staines team contained international players, two of whom (Eric Green and Harry Scott Freeman) also went on to Olympic success.
 |  | |
Left: Staines HC’s England international Harry Scott Freeman. Photograph and artwork from The Hockey Museum collection. | ||
