New year, new start for the flagship women’s team at Cheltenham Hockey Club even though they are halfway through the 2025/26 season.

They host bottom-of-the-table Exeter on Saturday in what will be their first competitive game for two months.

They played their last game in the England Hockey Women’s Conference West on Saturday 29^th November and they are looking to kick-start their season after a difficult first half to the campaign.

They have won two and drawn two of their opening 10 games and are eighth in the 10-team division, just three points ahead of Exeter.

“It’s a must-win game, 100 per cent,” said Cheltenham captain Rosie Stranack, “It’s a big game, we’re at home and we’ll be going out as aggressively as we can.”

Cheltenham won 2-1 at Exeter back in September – Arwen Stokes and Ellie Thomson got their goals – and another three points would certainly be very welcome.

A win for Exeter could leave Cheltenham bottom of the table by Saturday evening but 24-year-old Stranack, who is in her first season as captain,  isn’t thinking that way.

“We’ve got quite a young side but we’ve got a lot of talent,” she said.

“There are some strong teams in the league but we’re looking forward to the second half of the season, we like a challenge.”

Goals, or the lack of them, have been a problem for Cheltenham this season.

They’ve scored just nine in the league – they’ve also conceded 21 – and Stranack, a defender, said: “We do need to take our chances but we could be more clinical at the back too, we’ve had a lot of close results.”

It could be that the mid-season break came at just the right time for Cheltenham after back-to-back defeats at Marlow and at home to Trojans.

“We had December off but we’ve been back in training for four weeks,” said Stranack. “We’ve played a couple of friendlies.”

Stranack, a former St Edward’s School pupil, has been at the club since she was eight and the club obviously means a lot to her.

“Realistically the aim is to stay in the national league, we’ve been at this level for nearly a decade,” she said.