Written for the RRR Newsletter | Edition 52, Winter 2010
When the Department of Agriculture and Food’s annual city versus country hockey game was held last year, the country team won – helped by two elite team members.
Geraldton technical officer Dirranie Kirby and Cunderdin biosecurity officer Terri Jasper have crossed paths in high level country hockey for more than 10 years. Both have played alongside department Lake Grace administrative officer Lyn Carruthers.
In April Dirranie went to Hong Kong as a member of the Australian Country Team, known as the ‘Occaroos’, to compete against premier teams from the Chinese island, the Hong Kong national team, Singapore and the national Malaysian team.
Born and bred in Beacon, Dirranie started playing local hockey at seven and discovered her destiny to be a goalkeeper at the age of 10.
“Goalkeepers are a special breed,” she said. “It is more of a mental game than anything – working out what players are going to do and how to counteract that.”
For the past 12 years she has lived in Geraldton and played in the local A-grade.
For several years Dirranie has also trained with the men’s team, to maintain her elite goalkeeping skills, and this year will be the goalkeeper in an A-grade men’s team.
She has been a member of the State Country Team for the past nine years and captained it for the past five.
Terri has also represented the State Country Team seven times and the South Australian team once – because of a shortage of players.
She followed in her mother’s steps and started playing hockey at Cunderdin at the age of nine.
These days she makes a 528 kilometre round trip each weekend to compete for the Madora Bay Saints team in Mandurah, because she loves to play on turf.
Terri says country hockey is quite different to city hockey.
“In the country it’s far more social,” she said. “In the city you play the game and go home. In the country you hang around and have a chat afterwards.”
During her time playing in Mandurah, Terri played against Lyn Carruthers, who has had a long hockey career.
This is the first in almost 35 years (she took a year off when pregnant with one of her two sons) that Lyn won’t be playing hockey so she can watch her 15 year old son’s football games.
Playing with the State Country Hockey team three times, Lyn was selected as part of the former All Stars State Country Team “six or seven times”.
She also spent two years in Mandurah as a development officer for the Peel Hockey Division running clinics at local schools, identifying talent and coaching.
Lyn says it’s hard work for country hockey players to play at an elite level.
“It’s a big commitment,” she said. “You have to do a lot of training on your own, there’s little financial support and you have to travel huge distances to train and play.”
While Lyn won’t be competing this year, she can’t be kept off the hockey field – she plans to do lots of umpiring.