Men’s Hockey are playing for two days straight for a Guinness World Record

Remember when everyone and his cocker-spaniel wanted to get a Guinness World Record for being double jointed? Well, the next in an extensive line of record attempts is the “Longest Ever Hockey Match” hosted by the Uni’s Hockey Club, where the team will face up against the RAF Hockey team later today. The current records sits at a mind-boggling 53 hours and 18 minutes; the Uni team are hoping to hit 55 hours and 30 minutes. Yes, you have read that correctly – that’s over 2 days, non-stop hockey. A prospect that would make Chris Hoy’s legs tremble.

Of course, alongside this attempt the club are looking to support The Royal Airforce Benevolent Fund, who do incredible work for injured servicemen. The aim is to raise £5000 – a hefty task, but one which is well under way with around 46 per cent (£2316.25) in donations already. We spoke with Men’s Hockey President, Jack Ieuan Tranter – affectionately known as Yaya – about the event and to find out how you can get involved!

Ok, so first up, what made you want to undertake such a mammoth task?

To be honest it was exam procrastination this time a year ago. At that point it was just a few notes on a scrap piece of paper and now those notes are pages and pages of risk assessments, news paper columns and helicopter landing applications. The two charities mean different things to the two teams, obviously the RAF has a lot of emotional attachment to the RAF Benevolent Fund as it helps so many former RAF Troops. For Men’s Hockey we are very proud to continue to support Help for Heroes, it was the charity that the parents of a previous player of ours chose to raise funds for after Adam ‘Stanners’ Stanfield passed away several years ago, since then all the fundraising we do as a club goes to them. If we can hit our £5,000 target I’d be so proud of how far we’ve come in the last few years.

What sort of problems do you envisage along the way? Blisters on blisters?

Jesus. Where to begin, I think the hardest thing will be to mentally stay alert, with 55 and half hours to play between a 16 man squad, things are going to get tough by Saturday evening. As long as we can keep each other going mentally, I’d say that avoiding cramp and injury are the next issues we’ve got to overcome. Luckily for us the RAF are bringing physios down and we’ve got Coca Cola Europe to give us some free drinks to keep us going.

You and RAF Hockey have linked up in the past, do you think this will come to further your relationship?

We’ve had some great tournaments, one off games and ridiculous nights out with them. So I’d have to admit that I’d be pretty gutted if we couldn’t keep the relationship going, especially after this!

Any surprises planned for during the 2-and-a-half day period?

Well we’ve got a raffle draw halfway through Saturday for a £35 prize for what the score will be at halftime, then we’ve got the end of game raffle draw for £50, but the main surprise could be from a rather dynamic group of maroon pilots on Saturday afternoon…

So how can people get involved?

You can come down from 1pm onwards on Friday (today) to the Hockey Pitches down at Highfields until we aim to finish at 10pm on Sunday. The pitchside bar will be open during the day and at night we’ve got some heaters. You’re also welcome to come down and give as much abuse as possible to our future President Bubbles. The main thing to get down to is the Helicopter landing at 5pm on the Friday, that’s going to be insane!

So, as Yaya mentioned, if you want to get involved at any point, head down to the Hockey Pitches at Highfields from 1pm today until around 10pm on Sunday.

Also, if you want to support such a magnificent effort and a very worthy cause you can do so at: https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/Longest-Ever-Hockey-Match. Or, if you’re feeling lazy you can text “HOCK69 £5” to 70070 to donate a fiver. Just think how much your body will thank you for having one and a half less VKs?