Graham Vinnicombe is a busy man at Cirencester Hockey Club – he’s men’s club captain, he’s captain of their 5^th XI and he coaches the boys’ under-14s.

He has taken on the two captaincy positions in the last couple of years or so, but has been coaching the boys for a decade or more.

And at the age of 62 he remains hugely enthusiastic about a sport that he started playing a bit later than most.

“It was in my early 30s,” he said. “I’d always been a footballer but once I decided to stop I played hockey instead. My wife Gill played hockey so I blame her!”

The Vinnicombes were living in Kent back then and Graham, who worked as a credit control manager before retiring last year, has been playing hockey for Cirencester for the past 23 years.

Ironically, Gill no longer players, and Vinnicombe said: “When I first started playing for Cirencester I was in their 2^nd XI, but I played a couple of years for the 1sts.

“As with the football, I’ve always been a defender.”

So did he find the transition from football to hockey straightforward?

“Yes and no,” he said. “There are obviously similarities with the positions on the field and the movements, but the technical side is very different. Instead of your feet you are using a stick and obviously that’s something you’ve got to master.”

It’s something Vinnicombe managed to master quite quickly and he’s now very happy passing on his knowledge to the under-14s at the club, as well as the younger players playing alongside him in the 5ths.

“The juniors are my passion,” he said. “We’ve got 300-plus youngsters – boys and girls – on our books.”

And it was these numbers that encouraged the club to establish a men’s 5th XI.

“A year before Covid, I mentioned to our chairman Paul Anstee that we’d got all these players coming out of the under-14s each year and that we needed to provide them with somewhere to play,” Vinnicombe explained.

“The 5^th XI is a development team to help the boys transition to senior hockey.”

And the youngsters could have a no better leader than Vinnicombe, someone who is a past captain of the club’s 3^rd XI and also someone who skippered Poulton Cricket Club’s 2^nd XI for more than 10 years.

Captaincy is clearly something he enjoys and being men’s club captain at Cirencester Hockey Club is certainly an important role.

The club have some 90 to 100 playing members in the men’s section and the numbers are pretty similar in the women’s section, which also runs five teams.

“My job is to make sure that everything runs smoothly,” said Vinnicombe, who lives in South Cerney.

“We try to provide hockey for all. We provide sport and exercise for lots of people in and around Cirencester.”