PUSH issue 28 should be arriving on your doormat (if you are wise enough to be a subscriber) in the next few days. We are pretty proud of what is a bumper 68-page issue.
Inside we complete our monster 'blind' hockey stick testing. If you haven't seen part I in PUSH 27, this involved painting over the sticks' graphics and then getting an expert panel to try them out without knowing the brand, model or even the price.

The panel then marked the sticks out of ten for first-touch, dribbling, 3D skills and power. Part II of the test included more than 30 sticks with retail prices from £50 to £200. Some of the lower-priced sticks were real stars when it came to the test results. So if a new stick is on your Christmas present list, we think you'd be crazy to buy without looking at the test results first. Maybe a pre-Christmas present of a PUSH suscription would be a smart investment?
Other products we put to the test include some dietary supplements, baselayers and clothing. While our mystery tester 'the Stik' casts his eye over bags to carry all that new gear around in. Seriously though, hockey needs a lot of gear these days – I remember when a small holdall from the Army and Navy Stores and a one-stick stick bag meant you were over equipped. I remember when a guy turned up his for his first University away game with two sticks, he earned the nickname 'two sticks' for the term of his student life – a moniker that was cemented when the two-sticks fell on his head from the bus luggage rack on a bumpy corner.
But I digress – back to Push. We've been spreading our wings of late – after all hockey is just England hockey – so we have stories from the United States, Argentina, Pakistan, Argentina, and all the Home Nations and Ireland. Barrack Obama even makes a guest appearance, a first for us! All our regular columnists are there too. So if you are a subscriber, there is plenty to look forward to, and if you are not, look at what you are missing out on. You can find out more about subscribing by clicking on the subscribe link above.
At PUSH we are really proud of the fact that we are all active hockey players and we hope that our passion for the game and our enthusiasm for reporting, researching, photographing and talking about hockey shine through in each issue. Reader or not, we are always pleased to hear from anyone about hockey, you can try the 'contact' link or my direct email is tom@pushhockey.com and you can find me on skype as editor.pushhockey when I'm not on the pitch.
Tom Cooper editor