Seán Cotter reflects on the changing face of hockey reporting in the context of East Grinstead’s championship decider away to Surbiton on Sunday 29 March:

A crowd of just over 300 packed Sugden Road to the seams for the clash between fifth-placed Surbiton and leaders East Grinstead, one of the three Slazenger EHL elite 10-team National Premier Division championship-deciding clashes on 29 March all pushing off at 2pm in various locations off the M25.

Supporters from both clubs, including over 50 lunching at Surbiton’s Old Members’ Day, were augmented by a host of press, photographers and cameramen covering the event.

All were informed by a bumper programme to commemorate Surbiton’s 100 years playing at Sugden Road (out of its 135 years of existence) produced by the club’s communications’ manager, Simon Fitch.

Guest of honour, although unable to attend the luncheon, was England Hockey (and European Hockey Federation) President Martin Gotheridge, accompanied by his wife Margaret, to present the Trophy and medals.

They must have been as relieved as East Grinstead were that the Sussex club won, thus saving them a dash by car to either Paddington Rec or Sonning Lane with the silverware, depending on the other two results (seventh-placed Hampstead & Westminster at home to second-placed Beeston and third-placed Reading hosting fourth-placed Cannock).

Oliver Rogers and James Labous (both of BBC East) were in Long Ditton filming events for England Hockey, which will eventually be seen on the www.englandhockey.co.uk website.

Kym Swaly of Sportsbeat/News Associates (watching his first ever hockey game under the “tutelage” of myself and South Hockey League press officer Mike Haymonds) was alongside the dugouts – all of us by kind permission of EHL match official Bob Shepherd - and by 4.54 that afternoon had produced an excellent report for the www.morethanthegames.com website.

Dotted around the pitch were photographers Eric Marsh (a freelance from Ash), Peter Savage (see results on his www.talkhockeyradio.co.uk website and this website) and Surbiton’s photographer Simon Hart (see his www.simonhartphotography.com website).

On the national reporting front, now doyen journalist Patrick Rowley of the “Sunday Express” was there and his report (completing a stand-in stint for away-abroad regular correspondent Charles Randall, who was just back and also present at the game) appeared in Monday’s “The Daily Telegraph” and can be seen on this (Hockey Writers’ Club) website at www.hockeywritersclub.com (put up by its secretary Dil Bahra) as well as on the paper’s website www.telegraph.co.uk sports section.

Finally the “Daily Express” columnist Graham Wilson was on the telephone from his office after the game and his column covering it appeared in Tuesday’s paper as well as on its website www.express.co.uk sports section.

It was also reproduced on George Brinks’s worldwide www.fieldhockey.com website.

The occasion was also extensively covered of course on East Grinstead’s excellent website at www.egscc.co.uk run by Matt Jones and Ann Needle.

This reproduced copies of: the relevant pages from the April edition of “Meridian Sport & Events” magazine (written by Howard Griggs); the “East Grinstead Courier and Observer” (written by Louise Poynton and Sheila Gow, also at www.thisisersatgrinstead.co.uk); Howard Griggs’s report in “The Argus” with pictures; a news item from the “West Sussex Gazette”; as well as reproductions of the aforementioned “The Daily Telegraph” and “Daily Express” reports plus the 13-line para from Monday’s “The Times”; in addition to Peter Savage’s “TalkHockey Radio” blog of Sunday evening and the report (with picture by Simon Hart) from the “EHL Newsletter” of Monday.

Elsewhere on the EG site you can click into its Photo Gallery (main photos by John O’Brien, plus more from Simon Hart) with links also into BBC national and local online media coverage of the game (including a preview interview with EG manager Matt Jones from Saturday’s Radio Sussex and Radio Surrey - just split off from Southern Counties Radio - Saturday Sports Report).

Local home coverage of the game (written by my goodself) appeared on the Surbiton club website at www.surbitonhc.com and in its online “Weekly Bulletin” (club members only, founded in and continuously published since 1928), as well as all the local newspapers and websites I contribute to – the “News & Mail” broadsheet series on Wednesdays (“Esher”, “Cobham”, “Molesey”, Walton & Hersham” and “Weybridge” editions); the “Surrey Comet” website www.surreycomet.co.uk from Monday onwards; plus “considered”s for the “Surrey Comet” and “Kingston Informer” newspapers that appear on Fridays.

So hockey coverage has not disappeared because it no longer gets much space in the “nationals”, rather its media outlets have already transmuted and continue to change and multiply rapidly, mainly onto the internet.

But sadly local newspapers are rapidly becoming an endangered species.

For example, after 74 years of publication (founded 1936) the “News & Mail” series in whose sports pages I have reported Surbiton for 30 of those years, is being closed (its last edition to be Wednesday 15 April), together with its office in Esher, to be moved to Guildford and merged into a new “Surrey Advertiser” Elmbridge edition from Friday 24 April.

But whether that will have a “dedicated” space for our “local” sport, I (and its sports editor of over ten years, Paul McManus) have yet (8 April) to be informed (although it too has a website for match reports at www.getsurrey.co.uk).

From the same group, part of Surrey & Berkshire Media Ltd, which is a division of the Guardian Media Group, the “Reading Evening Post” is being reduced from five to two days a week and its full-time sports desk, including editor David Wright, is being cut from five to two, with again future sports space content still to be decided, although this paper also has an extensive sports section on its www.getreading.co.uk website.

Doubtless future coverage of Sunday’s championship-deciding fixtures will also appear in the sport’s two national magazines “Push” (also with an online version and website at www.pushhockey.co.uk) and England Hockey’s “EH News”.

This latter magazine (which is also has an online version) is currently only available to England Hockey Members (to find out more about the England Hockey Membership scheme and how to join in order to get the magazine, visit the www.englandhockey.co.uk/membership website).

And I haven’t even had a chance yet to start looking through chatlines like www.talkinghockey.net and individual player comments on their Facebooks and Blogs (or even Twitters).

The world is changing far too fast for this 71-year-old “traditional” print journalist!