International touring has a long and distinguished sporting history. Within British hockey, Australasia has been an attractive location to tour to as far back as the early twentieth century. An England women’s side travelled to Australia and New Zealand in 1914, in an era before UK women had the vote (but Australia and New Zealand had enjoyed women’s emancipation for some years). England toured to Australia again in 1927 prior to an Anglo-Scottish women’s tour to Australia in 1937. There were International Federation of Women’s Hockey Association (IFWHA) World Conferences & Tournaments in Sydney, Australia in 1956 and Auckland, New Zealand in 1971, which were approached with something akin to a touring mentality rather than formal tournaments. Great Britain men enjoyed an Australia tour in 1966.

Yet touring internationally is not exclusively the domain of international teams. Following in the footsteps of these early pioneers, more recent decades have seen school hockey teams embracing transcontinental touring.

Buford School’s Mixed Hockey Tour

August 2022 marks the 25th anniversary of Burford School in Oxfordshire’s first mixed hockey tour to Australia in 1997.

Between 5-22 August 1997, twenty 16-year-olds and three members of staff made the 12,000-mile journey. It included visits to Perth in Western Australia, the Central Coast in New South Wales, and the iconic city of Sydney.

Burford School mixed hockey team in Australia, 1997. Left: taking in the Perth Skyline. Right: Sydney Harbour Bridge. Below: Touring the Central Coast, New South Wales.

The tour party experienced many great sight-seeing opportunities, but the highlight of the trip on the hockey field was undoubtedly the 3-1 victory over Sydney Co Ed Grammar School at Holmbush, the hockey venue for the Olympic Games in 2000.

Burford School and Sydney Co Ed Grammar School share a group photograph after their match at Holmbush, 15 August 1997.

Theirs was an ambitious and trail-blazing tour. According to Monica Pickersgill, President of the All England Women’s Hockey Association (AEWHA), it was “the first school mixed hockey tour we [the AEWHA] have had the pleasure of supporting”.

Toby Douglas of Edwin Doran Sports Tours, the company who organised the trip and is the market leader in school sports tours, states that as far back as 1974 (when the company was founded) he could find no reference to school mixed hockey tours to anywhere outside the UK.

This was the first British school mixed hockey tour outside of the UK ever recorded – unless you know differently.

Letter from Monica Pickersgill, President of the AEWHA.

Hockey at Burford School

Hockey has been played at Burford School since the 1930s, a near century-long tradition of girls, boys and mixed teams.

Mixed hockey was the vehicle for three major overseas tours to Australia in 1997, Canada in 2000 and Australia and New Zealand in 2003. It played on three visits to Burford’s twin town, Potenza Pocena in Italy, as part of cultural visits in the late 2000s. These also included a full orchestra and choir!

Ernest Hartley, the most famous Old Burfordian.

Many former Burford School pupils played county hockey, but the most famous Old Burfordian is Ernest Hartley, who played hockey for The Isis Club in Oxford and for England. Ernest earned the first of 17 caps for England (three as Captain) in 1922. In an amusing coincidence, one of the matches he captained was, of all places, in Perth – though this was Perth in Scotland (for Scotland vs England), not Australia! The hope is that Ernest’s family will receive a posthumous cap at some time in the not too far distant future.

As of August 2022, the groundwork is being completed for an all-weather pitch at the school, specifically for hockey!

By Bill Williams
Bill was Head of Physical Education and Sport at Burford School between 1987-2019. He organised the 1997 Australia tour alongside his wife Mandy, who led girls Physical Education at the school.