Holcombe Hockey Membership has misplaced one among its most devoted servants. Richard Russell, who died on 14 Could aged 54, gave greater than 30 years to the sport he cherished.
Hockey is stuffed with names that by no means make the again pages. Richard Russell was one among them, and Holcombe Hockey Membership will really feel his absence for years to come back.
Richard died on 14 Could 2026, aged 54, following a collision on the M2 between Junction 3 at Blue Bell Hill and Junction 4 at Gillingham. He leaves a spot in Medway hockey that won’t be simply crammed, and a household who adored him.
His story with the membership started in 1988/89, when he arrived on the outdated Rochester & Gillingham Hockey Membership alongside schoolmates Richard Cottam, Mark Hatcher, Neil Sheridan and Spencer Wichall. He began within the 4th XI beneath Chris Beaney, and he made an impression rapidly. Teammates keep in mind a dedicated participant with an actual eye for the ball and a passion for hitting it exhausting, helped alongside by his weak point for unusually heavy sticks.
There was a quirk, too. When he stepped as much as take a 16 yard hit, he would name “wait on”, a phrase borrowed straight from the cricket area. Cricket was his different love. He captained a Sunday XI at Hempstead, and it was scoring, the cautious preserving of figures and information, that gave him the nickname that caught for all times: Stato. Anybody who knew him knew it fitted.
That love of element formed the whole lot he gave to hockey. He captained sides in 1993/94 and 1995/96 and served as Males’s Secretary in 1994/95. However it was as Fixture Secretary that Richard left his deepest mark. He took it on with a precision and satisfaction that earned him Clubman of the 12 months greater than as soon as, and when Rochester & Gillingham merged with Holcombe in 2000, he merely carried on.
On the pitch he was a fixture within the fifth and sixth groups for over a decade earlier than work pulled him away from taking part in. Off it, his position solely grew. From 2003/04 he took cost of each males’s and ladies’s fixture, a job he held for greater than 20 years. 20 years of arranging matches, chasing confirmations, fixing the small weekly puzzles that maintain a membership working. Most members by no means noticed the work. They simply knew the video games occurred, on time, season after season.
He stored the information too. Goalscorer lists up to date each week with out fail. Finish of season reviews for each captain, with appearances, objectives and milestones all logged and accounted for. In doing so he turned, virtually by chance, the keeper of the membership’s historical past. His ardour stretched past Holcombe as effectively, organising fixtures throughout Kent Hockey for years till the game restructured beneath South East Hockey.
That’s the factor about individuals like Richard. The contribution is quiet and fixed, and also you solely measure it correctly when it stops.
Away from the membership he was, above all, a household man. He had been along with his spouse Sandra for 25 years, married for nearly 21, and he was father to Harry, Lucy and Eddie. Sandra remembered a husband who put his household first in the whole lot, describing him as “humble and sort” and her largest supporter. A person of foolish humour and small every day kindnesses, she stated, and her greatest good friend.
He was a Gillingham fan too, which on this nook of Kent is its personal type of loyalty.
Tributes from the Holcombe committee spoke of his dedication, his reliability and his quiet dedication, and of a presence valued by everybody who labored alongside him. That rings true. Hockey golf equipment survive on volunteers who ask for nothing and provides for many years, and Richard was the easiest of them.
His passing leaves an actual void at Holcombe, and the ideas of the broader hockey neighborhood are with Sandra, Harry, Lucy and Eddie. He can be missed on the touchline, within the fixtures inbox, and within the information he stored so faithfully. Greater than that, he can be remembered, fondly and for a very long time, for the whole lot he gave to the sport and the golf equipment he cherished.
