About
South West Strikers Hockey Club Inc.
(SWS) is a hockey club which consists of senior men’s, women’s and junior teams from the Greater south western region of Sydney. The club was formed to provide players with the opportunity for local Macarthur based players to play in the most demanding hockey competition in NSW, the Sydney Hockey Association (SHA) Premier League. This growing club is affiliated and is a financial member of the SHA but also enjoys the support of the Macarthur Hockey Association.
The Club first competed in the SHA in the year 2000. SWS competed in the Premier B Division that required clubs to enter a 1st, 2nd and 3rd grade team. In its inaugural season SWS proved to be very competitive and narrowly missed out on the semi-finals in all three grades. The majority of players were aged 17-20, and all of them illustrated vast improvement and gained valuable experience over that first season.
2001 saw a number of our players develop into U/21 representative players and be inducted into NSW academy squads and the like.
Since then SWS have added a junior team playing in the U/15’s in 2003 winning the SHA U/15 Premiership and again winning the Premiership in the U/17 competition in 2004.
2004 was clearly SWS best year since its inception. All three Premier B grades made the finals and the club lost the Club Championship by only three points to rival club Arncliffe Scotts / St George. The SWS 1st grade side went on to win the Premier B Premiership defeating Randwick 3-1 in the Grand Final whilst both 2nd & 3rd grade sides narrowly missed a berth in the Grand final.
In 2005, the club won the club championship in Premier B and in 2006 was promoted to Premier League, arguably the toughest club based competition in Australia.