Brighton & Hove Hockey Club is celebrating the return of World Cup winners this week as their England representatives picked up gold and bronze medals at the Hockey Masters event in New Zealand.

Alison Wheatley and Jon Williams struck gold with the England Over-55s women's and men's teams while Amanda Billington won bronze with the England Over-45s women. Amelia Pamplin was the physiotherapist and stand-in manager for the women's Over-65s squad who also won gold.

Alison (pictured above celebating) scored the winner and was voted player of the match in the 2-1 quarter-final defeat of Australia. England Over-55s beat Alliance IMC (2-0), Wales (4-0), Canada (5-1) and drew 1-1 with Argentina to finish second in their pool and then saw off the Netherlands 3-1 to reach the final, where they claimed victory against Ireland 1-0.

England Over-55s men dominated their event winning all four group games against Belgium (4-0), Singapore (16-1) with Jon scoring twice, Ireland (3-0) and South Africa (2-0). In the semi-final they beat New Zealand 3-0 and then Australia, with four goals in eight second half minutes, 4-2 to take the gold medal.

"It was an incredible team performance," said Jon. "We were the best team there and showed our character coming from 2-0 down in the final against a good Australian team."

England women's Over-45s, with Amanda keeping goal, opened with a 2-1 loss to Australia but then beat Germany (2-1) and the Alliance IMC (5-0) to finish second in their pool. They went down 1-0 to Argentina in the semi-finals and then won bronze by beating New Zealand 4-0.

Amelia was among the support staff helping the victorious women's Over-65, who beat Wales 7-0 in the final, scoring 33 goals in their six matches.

The club sends congratulations to them all and are proud of their achievements.