Tilburg D1 plays in Hoofdklasse next season

From the beginning of the season in the promotie klasse the ambition of Tilburg has been to achieve promotion to the Dutch hockey ‘premier league’ known as hoofdklasse. They were well on track as they were at the top of the league with 2 games to play. We went to watch the game of Tilburg D1 against Leonidas from Rotterdam as Hannelore is a big fan of Maddie Hinch. Tilburg lost that game unfortunately, Tilburg ended up second and Rotterdam achieved direct promotion to hoofdklasse. The consequence was that Tilburg had to play play offs against Oranje Rood in a best of three format to try and still clinch the promotion ticket. This turned out to be a true thriller requiring the 3 games to have a winner. All 3 games ended in a draw with shout outs deciding the winner. Tilburg came out on top 2 times in these shoot outs with specialist Maddie Hinch defending the Tilburg goal and they will play in hoofdklasse next season : objective achieved. Unfortunately we couldn’t go and watch the match live this time, more than 2000 fans turned up to watch the game, the atmosphere must have been electrifying. Next season we can go and watch Tilburg play at the highest level in the Netherlands (probably the strongest competition in the world).