The Outcasts
The Sunday, Summer and Festival Organ of Blackheath HC
In 1934 Blackheath received an invitation to send a team to the Worthing Easter Hockey Festival, a number of Members were keen to go but The Committee at the time decreed that as it would not be the First XI, they would have to call themselves something other than Blackheath. The Club was also fairly well stocked with members of the clergy at the time, one of whom stated that if the team played on the Sabbath they would be regarded as outcasts from The Club.
One Saturday on his way home on a number 10 tram Roy Keller decided that The Outcasts would be an excellent name for the festival team and so the Outcasts were born.
Since then we have attended about 50 Worthings, 30 Thanets, 10 Medways, and various other exotic venues in this Country and abroad among them: Isle of Wight, Isle of Man, Guernsey, Jersey, Cork, Dublin, Prague, Wales, Scarborough, Derby, and East Anglia.
Sunday social hockey has given way to the demands of Leagues, Cups and ‘er indoors, but The Outcasts still manage a fairly full programme of summer evening hockey, mixed matches and end-of-season tours.
Over Easter 2010 The Outcasts visited Warwickshire, with the following results:
v Warwick Lost 2-3; v Evesham Lost 1-2; v Stratford Won 6-5
John Bartlett
Outcasts President