Lowveld Country Club and White River shared the spoils at this year’s Ehlanzeni Knockouts, which concluded last week, bringing an end to a great 2024 season for Ehlanzeni Hockey.

The Ehlanzeni Knockouts are typically held at the start of the annual hockey season, but with a shake-up of the traditional Ehlanzeni hockey calendar, it was moved to the end of the season. This saw the league itself move to the start of the season to finish up before the provincial and national tournaments in June and early July.

The brand-new Ehlanzeni Super League was then introduced and held in late July and early August, with the Ehlanzeni Knockouts moved to later in August. Unlike the Super League, the Knockouts feature the same clubs from the Ehlanzeni Senior Hockey League – White River, LVCC, Impala and KaNyamazane.

This makes it the fitting conclusion to the season as clubs and their players get to wrap things up for 2024. The competition’s first round was held at Penryn on August 18, and initially, all participating teams are included in the draw for the cup division. However, as matches are played and teams win or lose, they are either promoted further in the cup division or moved down to the plate division.

The two clubs with participating first teams, LVCC and Impala, gained automatic spots in the cup semi-finals in both the men’s and ladies’ competitions. Both LVCC’s teams faced White River in the semis after the latter won the first round of fixtures. This while Impala’s two teams faced LVCC’s second teams in their semi-finals.

The first teams proved no match for the second teams, and both LVCC and Impala’s first men’s and ladies’ teams earned progression to the cup final at Penryn on August 25, the same day as the plate division semis and finals.

LVCC 2 and White River 2 were the two men’s teams that moved on to the plate final, while in the ladies’ competition, Impala 2 and White River progressed to the plate final. The men’s plate final went the way of White River 2, who won 3-1 against LVCC 2. In the ladies’ plate final, White River were victorious again, winning 2-0 to secure a clean sweep of the plate division.

The cup finals were a tense affair, though, with both the men’s and ladies’ finals ending 1-1 between LVCC and Impala. This meant both finals went to eight-second shoot-outs to determine the respective winners. Both shoot-outs went the way of LVCC with 2-1 score lines, meaning that LVCC won both the men’s and ladies’ cup titles to end the season on a high.