Holcombe Hockey Club has lost one of its most devoted servants. Richard Russell, who died on 14 May aged 54, gave more than 30 years to the game he loved.
Hockey is full of names that never make the back pages. Richard Russell was one of them, and Holcombe Hockey Club will feel his absence for years to come.
Richard died on 14 May 2026, aged 54, following a collision on the M2 between Junction 3 at Blue Bell Hill and Junction 4 at Gillingham. He leaves a gap in Medway hockey that will not be easily filled, and a family who adored him.
His story with the club began in 1988/89, when he arrived at the old Rochester & Gillingham Hockey Club alongside schoolmates Richard Cottam, Mark Hatcher, Neil Sheridan and Spencer Wichall. He started in the 4th XI under Chris Beaney, and he made an impression quickly. Teammates remember a committed player with a real eye for the ball and a fondness for hitting it hard, helped along by his weakness for unusually heavy sticks.
There was a quirk, too. When he stepped up to take a 16 yard hit, he would call “wait on”, a phrase borrowed straight from the cricket field. Cricket was his other love. He captained a Sunday XI at Hempstead, and it was scoring, the careful keeping of figures and records, that gave him the nickname that stuck for life: Stato. Anyone who knew him knew it fitted.
That love of detail shaped everything he gave to hockey. He captained sides in 1993/94 and 1995/96 and served as Men’s Secretary in 1994/95. But it was as Fixture Secretary that Richard left his deepest mark. He took it on with a precision and pride that earned him Clubman of the Year more than once, and when Rochester & Gillingham merged with Holcombe in 2000, he simply carried on.
On the pitch he was a fixture in the 5th and 6th teams for over a decade before work pulled him away from playing. Off it, his role only grew. From 2003/04 he took charge of every men’s and women’s fixture, a job he held for more than 20 years. Two decades of arranging matches, chasing confirmations, solving the small weekly puzzles that keep a club running. Most members never saw the work. They just knew the games happened, on time, season after season.
He kept the records too. Goalscorer lists updated every week without fail. End of season reports for every captain, with appearances, goals and milestones all logged and accounted for. In doing so he became, almost by accident, the keeper of the club’s history. His passion stretched beyond Holcombe as well, organising fixtures across Kent Hockey for years until the sport restructured under South East Hockey.
That is the thing about people like Richard. The contribution is quiet and constant, and you only measure it properly when it stops.
Away from the club he was, above all, a family man. He had been with his wife Sandra for 25 years, married for almost 21, and he was father to Harry, Lucy and Eddie. Sandra remembered a husband who put his family first in everything, describing him as “humble and kind” and her biggest supporter. A man of silly humour and small daily kindnesses, she said, and her best friend.
He was a Gillingham fan too, which in this corner of Kent is its own kind of loyalty.
Tributes from the Holcombe committee spoke of his dedication, his reliability and his quiet commitment, and of a presence valued by everyone who worked alongside him. That rings true. Hockey clubs survive on volunteers who ask for nothing and give for decades, and Richard was the very best of them.
His passing leaves a real void at Holcombe, and the thoughts of the wider hockey community are with Sandra, Harry, Lucy and Eddie. He will be missed on the touchline, in the fixtures inbox, and in the records he kept so faithfully. More than that, he will be remembered, fondly and for a long time, for everything he gave to the game and the clubs he loved.
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