We are more of an 'old school' Festival, giving a true sense of escaping the real world for 3 days. A 3 day weekend of fun 11-a-side competitive mixed hockey, partying, camping, drinking, laughing, dancing, dressing up, and plenty of banter with a bit more hockey thrown into the mix. The 2022 Penguin Hockey Festival has been confirmed to take place across the beginning of June bank holiday weekend
. It's the Queen's platinum jubilee so we get an extra day to party. Like previous years, the hockey will be run like a tournament so scores will be required and there will be an award ceremony at the end. Over the weekend there will be a welcome party, fancy dress night (theme will be announced soon) and a BBQ (which is included in the entrance fee). Covid has prevented the festival from going ahead in 2020 and 2021 so let's make up for it in 2022. Festival history:
The Penguin Festival began in 1974 and used to be the largest mixed hockey festival in the world with over 120 teams attending every year from the UK and from around the world. The venues did change sometimes but the festival spirit was always there and teams loved to tour by the sea. On Friday night every pub in the town centre was full of touring teams in tour shirts. Saturday night was fancy dress night with 1000 people attending. Sunday night was night club night where we had exclusive hire of the night club at the end of the pier. Some hotel bars stayed open all night for us. Competition from other festivals has increased over the years but our festival is just as much fun with teams returning each year and new teams being made to feel very welcome. The festival was originally held in the Worthing area, but in 2011 the main ground was turned into a football academy, so we moved a few miles west to a new astro pitch at the Angmering High school. This then gave us an opportunity to host the festival on one site & able to accommodate camping teams and reduce the cost of having to stay in hotels. We have use of the school facilities like showers, canteen and land for 7 pitches. We moved the evening events to our on-site large marquee but still hosted the popular night club night in Worthing town centre on the Sunday night as well as finding a new late bar. The club on the Pier was an amazing venue but due to the council’s ‘anti fun’ attitude it never regained a license in 2012 which was a great shame for the town. We were lucky to be able to hire other premier late night venues instead. We have taken note of feedback and hope teams and tourists that haven’t been for a while return and we can attract some new teams as well. To enquire about entering a team please email [email protected] or message us on here. More details will be added nearer the time on an event page. Please invite as many hockey players as possible to like this page. Please ask all you hockey friends to like this page and follow us on Twitter;
Thank you
The Festival Committee
