Hockey: Havant home in on final

HAVANT, who only had to avoid a 10-goal defeat in order to qualify for today's B division final in the men's European Club Championship, finished their pool matches in style yesterday with a 10-0 win against Tiikerit, the Finnish champions, writes Peter Colwill from Havant.

Confident enough to omit Russell Garcia and Don Williams from their starting line- up, Havant stormed to a 4-0 lead in 21 minutes. Matthew Cross blasted in their first penalty corner, Steve Baker rescued a badly- taken corner to produce a fine opportunist goal, and Cross converted another corner before touching in the fourth after a dazzling run by Stuart Avery.

After surviving three Tiikerit corners, Avery added a fifth from a corner just before the interval, in all Havant scored from five of their eight corners.

Nor was there was any relief for Tiikerit later following the introduction of Garcia and Williams. They both scored, while Ian Pattison and Calum Giles completed the rout en route to a showdown with the Poles from WKS Grunwald.

Havant: S Rowlands; S Lawson, D Faulkner, D Cunliffe, C Cooper (capt), G Roberts, M Cross, P Nail, C Giles, S Baker, S Avery. Substitutes: D Williams, R Garcia, D Roberts, I Pattison.

Tiikerit: P Poikonen; J Tamminen (capt), A Suonuuti, M Heino, R Vitanen, A Paananen, M Salo, J Tohni, T Alliniemi, J Ojala, A Lemi. Substitutes: R Makinen, E Jaakkola.

Umpires: R De Wolf (Bel), M Jakubiak (Pol).

Results, Sporting Digest, page 27