History of Harborne Hockey Club

History of Harborne Hockey Club


Founded in 1903, HHC is proud to be the first ever team to score a goal in the National League.

The following has some excerpts from the National Hockey Museum archive, with an article written by Peter Troy. (full article can be found here). The photo is a historic photo from the website Hockey Gods, and can be found here.

The Harborne Story by Peter Troy
1903 - 1988

The existence of a Harborne Club was mentioned in the 1899 edition of "Hockey" but the present club's records commence in 1903 when the first recorded match was played at the Church Avenue ground which is still shared with Harborne Cricket Club but now as a club house. The Ladies section was introduced in 1983/4 season, and with the introduction of a 6th team recently, is now larger than the Mens section.


County and International Honours:

The club's first international player was Frank Wainwright, who played in goal for England in 1929. In more recent years many other players have appeared for both England and Wales, with Paul Fishwick (England) and Peter Marsh (Wales) playing for Great Britain at the Olympic Games of 1964 and 1972 respectively.

League History

Competitive club hockey started in 1967 when Harborne were the first winners, with Leicester Westleigh, of the Midland Clubs Championship.

Harborne was placed in the Premier Division in the inaugural season and remained there until promoted to the first division of the Poundstretcher National League in 1988. In the 2018/19 season, the Mens 1st team were promoted back into the National League Conference West League after finishing top of the Midland Premier League.