22 May 2010, SINGAPORE | Tornados Hockey Club have made a telling impact in the Singapore Hockey Federation (SHF) Women's Division 1 this season. Topping the standing for majority of the season, the Western Singapore club will be up against it this weekend when they meet the two Hollandse Club teams over the weekend.

They are in fantastic form however as during the midweek they demolished Buccaneers 6-1 to stroll into the semi-finals which was never in doubt. Tornados are one of two teams to have been unbeaten all season and the other is the team they will meet today at 6pm.

Hollandse Club Lex have been cursed with bad luck with the weather as three of their games in the early part of the season were either postponed or called off due to lightning and heavy rain. This was a rectified this past week when they played 4 games in the space of 6-days. They displayed tremendous determination to bag all four wins to move within 2-points of league leaders and tournament favourites Tornados who have 22-points in the kitty.

The Tornados were in scintillating form last Wednesday and top league scorer Gemma Thomas opened the scoring with a well worked field goal before going on to score a further 3 goals that put her in good stead to become the league's top scorer. Micha Weiss, on her debut, put in a noteworthy performance to provide the other 2 goals and looked good for a hat-trick had she been given more time on the pitch.

It wasn't all plain sailing, however. At half time and 4-0 down, Buccaneers rolled the dice and switched to a kicking-back. This seemed to unsettle the Tornados and Dawn de Foe managed to keep them at bay for 20 minutes before Thomas and Weiss found their rhythm again.

Buccaneers seemed under strength throughout, with only the bare 11 players available, and a goal from Vanessa Cheong with 5 minutes to go was scant consolation to a team that could well face Tornados again in the play-offs early next month.

Another team vying for the title is Hollandse Club Max and they play the raging Tornados on Sunday at 3pm. This is especially interesting set of fixtures as SHF understands that the two club's men's teams have organised a friendly game exchange this morning to truly make this a Tornados v Hollandse weekend.

The SHF Women's Division 1 has come to life this term with the chase for the title going down to the wire. A champion will emerge following games on Tuesday next week and more fireworks and excitement can be expected in the play-offs which has been scheduled for the first week of June.-story by SHF (with parts contributed by Richard Ayers of Tornados HC)