User:LondonCrusaders

London Crusaders
The London Crusaders are a professional ball hockey team based in Charlton London and Dartford. They are registered with Ball Hockey UK. The Crusaders are one of the Original six teams playing the London Ball Hockey League] They are members of the South Conference of the Ball Hockey United Kingdom (BHUK). The team was founded on February 16,2011.

History

1.FEB 2011 The first idea of establishing a ball hockey team came from Richard Zeleznik. He was lucky enough to work with many like minded young Europeans that were also fed up with the daily routine. One the very first people that wanted to join the ball hockey team was Martin Horehaj who at that time already owned a goalkeeper hockey stick and became the team’s first goalie. He was so enthusiastic with the idea to create multicultural ball hockey team comprising of players from various countries that he get himself almost the full goalkeeper equipment in just few days. The team faced many problems in the very first weeks of its existence. Many of the players were sceptical about the long term prospects of the team and some were not prepared to spend money on the equipment. The team struggled to find suitable location for regular trainings. It did not take long until the team found old basketball court where the very first training was held on 12 February 2011. The first training consisted of founder Richard Zeleznik together with Lubomir Smindak (SVK), Krisztian Barancsi (HUN) and Martin Horehaj (SVK) who lied down the foundations of London Crusaders.

Richard Zeleznik took several photos during the first training 16.2.2011 which helped fade away any previous doubts about future prospects of the team. It wasn’t long after when others started to join the team. Among others, Martin Tyrol (SVK) who at that time had no idea that he was to become the goalkeeper of fighting Crusaders. The news about the ball hockey team started to spread rapidly and attracted other floorball, hockey and street hockey enthusiasts. Even people that have never played any similar sport started to join and managed to quickly established themselves and become very strong part of the team. Many talented players took part in creation of the team but unfortunately some of them were unable to continue to contribute to the success of the team because life circumstances did not allowed to them.

After numerous trainings players felt that our team need a name. Our main aim was to be the best ball hockey team in United Kingdom. We considered several names but Crusaders reflected our ambitions to dominate this sport. Later we changed the name to London Crusaders because of the city where our team was created. Shortly after we established ourselves as a team with name, we wanted to test our strength against other teams.

It did not take long until we found our first opponent Canadian Jets. First friendly match against London Jets took place 2.5.2011 Canadians proved to be on much higher level than we expected and they crushed Crusaders with high score.Crusaders did not lose pride and on the very next day they played against another London team called Hendon. London Crusaders won the match against the team that is mostly consisted of Slovak players.

Crusaders were invited to join UKDHA on 5.5.2011 and just few months later they took part in their first London Capital Cup tournament. Crusaders played bravely and won second place. This achievement was great start of their very first season in the league. Crusaders were able collect enough points in many other tournaments within their first season to be invited to tier 1 National ballhockey championship in Sheffield.

3.6.2012 National Champions

The best five teams where invited to the biggest ballhockey event in UK. Crusaders did not start the championship as they hoped they would. They lost the first two games and chances to win any medal were low. Crusaders broke the bad luck by scoring a goal in their third match that helped them to win against Shaun Millionaires. They also won the next match against Arnolds Nightwolves that made them to progress from third place in the group to semi-finals.

The team captain broke his misfortune when he opened the score in the semi-finals. The game became much harder. Crusaders survived several tough short-hand situations but still won 2:0 against NE Dekstars the National Champions winners from 2010. Crusaders moved to finals to face Arnold Wolves, the team that at that time did not lost 18 matches in the row. The siren announced the start of the most difficult match of the day. The both team played very carefully. Even if Arnold Wolves opened the score, Crusaders did not give up fighting. They put together all their strength and they locked Arnold Wolves in their defence zone and scored goal in last minutes of the game. The match finished in a 1 - 1 draw. Penalty shot-outs were used to decide of the winner of championship. None of the teams scored a goal after the first set of three shot-outs. The winning goal was shoot by defender Martin Gaborik (SVK) in the fourth shot-out. The opponent team player needed to score but the goalkeeper Martin Tyrol (SVK) did not give him a chance and successfully destroyed his chance. Crusaders won their first national ballhockey championship in history and become UK champions. The dream became reality as Crusaders achieved unthinkable.