After a long and vigorous off season during which the team suffered the graduation and lost of 10 1st team players as well as a change of coach, Rory O'Donoghue coming in from Monkstown replacing John McInroy who returns to South Africa.

The new look UCD Men's Hockey Team finally lined out for their first competitive match of the season and who better to test this new look side but Irish Senior Cup Champions Glenanne in the Neville Cup, where the Glens' are also reigning champions.

UCD started strong and looked well able to compete. With John Brennan putting in strong physical tackles to unsettle the Glenanne forward line. But on the 23rd minute Stephen Brownlow netted his second in three games with a sweetly taken reverse-stick flick over former Glens’ keeper Gareth Carragher in his first UCD outing to make it 1-0 to the gLens'.

He was one of several newcomers – Ben Dobson (Cork C of I), Phil Byrne (Glenanne), Luke Chadwick (YMCA), Conor Motyer (Corinthian), Max Prendergast (Corinthian) and Dutchman Guiddo Bakker from Cartouche the others – to line out following fresher’s week.

This was the only real opportunity of the half for either side and they went into the break at 1-0.

After pretty audible team talks from both coaches the teams came strong at each other at the start of the second half and on the 38th minute Eddie O’Malley made it 2-0 before Dobson made it 2-1 when he pulled one back with an individual effort, picking the ball up on the 25 before firing a reverse into the bottom right of the goal on his debut.

UCD searched for the equaliser and with Motyer retaining the ball well in central midfield and Chadwick always treating from the left it looked like it was going to come but when Joe Brennan scored a drag-flick to make it 3-1 for Glens' before player-coach Graham Shaw taped in on the far post the game was put beyond college and the game ended 4-1 in a physical encounter where Richard Jones and Byrne spent time in the bin for college and Graham Shaw say time out for Glens'.

College now look forward to their first league match against Three Rock Rovers on the 16th October to start what will hopefully be a successful season for their young side.

Glenanne 4 (Stephen Brownlow, Joe Brennan, Eddie O’Malley, Graham Shaw) UCD 1 (Ben Dobson)