Canberra Chill record 'a first for the league' in Hockey One membership boost

He saw more than 1800 people braving cool conditions to fill the seats and the grass of the Lyneham Hockey Centre to watch the Canberra Chill host the Tassie Tigers in round two of their Hockey One campaign.

Suddenly the men's side's 7-0 loss to Tassie didn't seem so bad. Things would only get better from there too, with Canberra's women's team beating the Tigers 4-0 as the two clubs split the honours.

"We've got over 1800 people here, and really excitingly, we've cracked the 1000 member mark which is obviously a first for the league and it shows the growth of the league," Sheekey said.

"We're excited and really happy with the turnout, not so much the on-field result - certainly the women are looking better [than the men's result] - but off-field, we're going really well.

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"We worked really hard at different formats. We launched a multicultural program, we're really excited to be delivering a HookIn2Hockey program this year in both Punjab and Hindi.

"We're trying to find new markets and new participants to grow the game and expose the game to more people than ever before."

Tassie's Jeremy Edwards needed just 39 seconds to score the Tigers' first with one of the fastest goals in competition history, before Sam McCulloch scored four goals in the opening half en route to a 7-0 win in the men's game.

The result leaves Canberra still searching for their first win of the season in the men's competition ahead of a trip to Adelaide to face the Fire.

But Naomi Evans got the Chill off to a flyer in the women's clash before Canberra recorded a clean sheet of their own to ignite their season.

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