Bray Hoping East Grinstead Can Build On Indoor Success As Vitality Women's Hockey League Returns

The Hockey Paper's Rod Gilmour spoke to East Grinstead forward Sophie Bray as the club to record their first indoor and outdoor league double.

To see full fixtures, results and tables from this week, click here.

East Grinstead will attempt to win the national indoor and outdoor double for the first time when the Vitality Women’s Premier Division resumes this weekend.

After claiming their third Super 6s indoor title in six editions last Sunday at the Copper Box Arena in front of a raucous support from West Sussex, focus now turns to outdoors and the race to a coveted European spot.

The new format sees the women’s top flight staged on consecutive Saturdays until April, with East Grinstead - in second place behind leaders Hampstead & Westminster - one of six teams who form the top tier split league. The new concept means that it is a step into the unknown, while Sophie Bray, the league’s top scorer with 10 goals, is intrigued to see how it will pan out.

“Ten games straight, a new format and I am interested to see how it goes. I don’t really know what to expect,” said Bray, who was part of the East Grinstead side which finished runner-up to Surbiton in the 2019/20 season.

“In the first-half of the season there was that final push to get into the top six. While we will be playing against the top six more often I understand that if I was in a team in the bottom tier, I would want to be challenging as a team and benchmarking against the top six."

Bray says that East Grinstead’s task will be made harder after losing several key players for the April run-in, including Chloe Palmer, who has moved to Australia with her family, and the club’s two Malaysian players who are on international duties. 

“I liked the traditional season we played for so many years with the play-offs at the end,” added Bray, who works as a business analyst for Cisco. “But when you are in the top six, Europe is what we are now fighting for. The challenge is that there are other great teams in the same position. We have a great points tally and the aim is to build.”

The multi-talented Bray, 31, still pursues an active life off the hockey pitch, taking part in Monday night football, interspersed with the odd game of padel, squash, tennis and golf, while she is also a big advocate of reformer pilates. She also coaches a weekly Saturday morning session with around 10 girls on a quarter astro pitch at a park in Fulham.

As far as the indoor season goes, Bray was due to have a rest over the winter break before her coach, Mary Booth, sent for back up. “It was a challenge with our internationals and whether they were going to play or not and I was asked to register,” said Bray. “I certainly have no regrets now having been part of a winning side.”

East Grinstead will now have their work cut out with three players set to feature for England women in the FIH Pro League this month. For co-head coach Booth, reaching Europe and finishing in the top two is high on the agenda. 

Booth said: “Having been to the EuroHockey Club Trophy in Lille in October, it was a really good learning experience for us and we did feel we could perform better. And on the back of indoor success, we are on a positive trajectory.”

Working alongside Jason Lee, the former GB women’s coach, the co-coach partnership ushered in the club’s third indoor trophy in six editions and a return to the European indoor scene for 2023 as England's representative club.

“We had players who hadn't really played indoors before so to get them together in a short space of time was great for them and for the club,” added Booth.

“We had a youngster, Eliza Wheeler (18), Amy Thompson came back, Chloe Brown is a real indoor player and Laura Myers, who hasn’t had a huge amount of indoor experience, performed like a soldier in goal.

“For a small club like ours, it was a great result for us, the fans were brilliant and the kids were excited. That’s what you want to do really, to inspire the little ones of the future.”