Last weekend provided plenty of fireworks for Surbiton’s showcase ladies’ and men’s teams.

On Saturday their Ladies’ first of seven sides kept up their bid to win the South Clubs’ Women’s Hockey League Division One at the first attempt with a surprisingly easy 8-0 win away to second-placed Southampton.

Player/coach Helen Grant brought her season’s league tally up to eight in six fixtures, with Georgie Parker also notching two from open-play and Emma Jones two penalty corners and Hannah Oakes and Sian Craze one apiece from open play.

Surbiton are now four points clear of Reading 1A (who as a club second team are ineligible for the one promotion spot to the National Conference leagues) and local rivals Epsom.

This weekend the Long Ditton-based club is in both league and cup action. On Saturday, fourth-placed Havant are the visitors to Sugden Road (push back 10 am). The following day, Buckingham, last season’s SCWHL Division One Champions and currently fourth in the England Hockey League Conference West, are the visitors with Surbiton one of only two non-National League clubs left in the England Hockey Women’s Cup Third Round (push back 2 pm).

Surbiton Ladies’ second team have already reached the quarter-finals of the Second Eleven Trophy after beating Hampstead & Westminster 3-1 at Sugden Road on Sunday thanks to two goals from Kate Holmes and Emma Elsom’s penalty stroke.

Immediately after that game the crowd swelled to over 200 to see Surbiton’s first (of 11) men’s sides have to hang on for an eventual 4-2 National Premier Division victory over Cannock.

Tim Pinnock from a second-minute penalty corner and Richard Alexander with open-play “sniffers” in the seventh and 24th minutes put the icing on a rampant first-half pass-and-run display.

But only a gift-wrapped fourth laid on for James Tindall by a Cannock defender six minutes from time put a halt to Cannock’s second-half revivalist change of tactics rewarded by penalty corner conversions in the 53rd and 62nd minutes.

The win keeps Surbiton level on 19 points with Reading at the top of England’s elite 10-team league, but now with a five worse goals difference than their Berkshire rivals who had a convincing 6-2 home win over ninth-placed Brooklands Manchester University who Surbiton travel to play this Sunday while Reading are also in the Cheshire suburbs, away to fifth-placed Bowdon.