Rela Hospital Tamil Hockey League 2026 Final Day: Sports Hostel of Excellence and SRM IST Crowned Champions. One Unforgettable Saturday at Egmore
Some tournaments end with a whimper. The Rela Hospital Tamil Hockey League 2026 ended with two shoot-outs, a stoppage-time equaliser, a scoreless final that somehow still had the whole ground on its feet, and a soundtrack of traditional parai drums that didn't let up for a second. Saturday, 12 September, at the SDAT Mayor Radhakrishnan Hockey Stadium, Egmore, was the day this season had been building toward since the first whistle in August — and it delivered on every count.
By the time the floodlights came on for the men's final, Tamil Hockey League 2026 had crowned both its champions.
The Women's Final: When Nothing Happened, and Everything Was on the Line
SRM IST and SHE Chennai walked into the title decider unbeaten, level on points, separated only by goal difference — and for sixty minutes, neither side blinked. SRM IST 0–0 SHE Chennai after regulation is the kind of scoreline that reads flat on a page and was anything but on the pitch. Two defences that had barely been breached all season met each other and simply refused to give an inch. No penalty corner routine broke through. No individual moment of magic found the net. It went to a shoot-out to do what sixty minutes of hockey couldn't.
SRM IST won it 2–1.
There was a lovely symmetry to how it finished. Vairavi M had carried SRM's attack all season — five goals in five matches, a hat-trick on opening day, a match-winning brace against Tiruvannamalai — and there was no sixth goal to add in the final, because there was no goal to be had for anyone. Instead, it was Suba Sri S, the quieter half of SRM's attacking pair all season, who was named Star of the Match — not for a goal, but for the composure that held SRM together when the game had nothing left to give and everything still to lose.
SRM IST are Tamil Hockey League Women's League 2026 champions. Vairavi M finishes as Golden Stick winner on five, a tally that didn't move in the final and didn't need to.
Watch THL womens league title decider here:
The Men's Final: A Final That Refused to Sit Still
If the women's final was a defensive chess match, the men's final was its total opposite — a game that changed hands four times in fifty-one minutes and still wasn't finished when the fourth quarter ended.
Minute | Goal | Scorer | Type |
5' | IOB 0–1 | Dilraj Singh | |
31' | 1–1 | V. Aravind | Penalty Stroke |
39' | 2–1 | K Srinivasan (capt.) | Field Goal |
43' | 2–2 | Dilraj Singh | Penalty Stroke |
44' | 2–3 | D Muthuselvan | Penalty Corner |
51' | 3–3 | N Aravind | Penalty Corner |
Indian Overseas Bank struck inside five minutes and looked every bit the team that had fought back from a Qualifier 1 shoot-out defeat to earn this second chance. Sports Hostel of Excellence, playing their first competitive minutes in five days, needed half an hour to find their rhythm — and then scored twice in eight minutes to turn the game on its head. IOB refused to fold, levelling within a minute of falling behind and then, in the very same passage of play almost, retaking the lead through D Muthuselvan's penalty corner. With seven minutes of the fourth quarter gone, IOB were back in front and looking like the side that would finally win the Qualifier 1 rematch.
Then, in the 51st minute, N Aravind — not to be confused with V. Aravind, his teammate and Qualifier 1's Star of the Match, a different player entirely — stepped up on a penalty corner and drilled home the equaliser that forced the shoot-out. It was his moment, and by the end of the night it was the moment that won him Star of the Match in the final.
Sports Hostel of Excellence won the shoot-out 3–2 — S Vishal and N Aravind converted in the regular five, before R Velragavan settled it in sudden death. Indian Overseas Bank's Harpanthpreet Singh and Dilraj Singh both scored, but it wasn't enough.
Sports Hostel of Excellence are Tamil Hockey League 2026 champions.
And in a final line that ties the whole season together:
Dilraj Singh's brace in the final — the same player who scored in the Qualifier 1 shoot-out, who has been the tournament's most dangerous forward for weeks — took him to 17 goals, sealing the Golden Stick as a champion even in defeat. It's the only individual honour the final truly settled with certainty on the losing side.
Watch Mens final & Awardy Ceremony here:
Fans and Atmosphere: The Day Egmore Made Its Own Noise
Numbers only tell half of what Saturday was. The other half was the sound.
The traditional parai drummers didn't let the stadium sit still for a single quarter — that beat found its way under the skin of a crowd that needed no encouragement anyway, and every time an attack broke into the circle, the ground answered it in kind.
There was booing too, the good-natured, full-throated kind that comes from a crowd that has shown up to be loud, not to be polite — opposition forwards found themselves serenaded with pantomime jeers every time they went near goal, and took it, by all appearances, entirely in their stride.
But the moment of the day belonged to three kids. A trio of kutty cheerleaders, decked out in full cheerleading gear, turned up in support of Indian Overseas Bank — and for a stadium that, on the day, could easily have been mistaken for a wall of SHE support given the noise from that end, three small kids waving pom-poms for the other side could have been swallowed whole. Instead, they pulled off their routine with a poise that had nothing to do with their size, dancing and chanting their way through a final that the grown-ups on the pitch were finding just as hard to control.
It was the kind of moment that had nothing to do with the scoreline and everything to do with why this tournament is worth showing up for.
An Experiment Worth Repeating: The 1 Goal Championship
Alongside the two main finals, Saturday also gave us our first taste of something new — the 1 Goal Championship, an experimental eight-team knockout played out in ten-minute bursts, where the very first goal ended the match on the spot and a goalless ten minutes went straight to a shoot-out. Bold, fast, and genuinely unpredictable, exactly as advertised, it turned the earlier part of the day into a rapid-fire carnival of hockey before the main finals even began. Vada Chennaiemerged as champions of this inaugural edition, and if the reaction on the day was any indication, this experiment won't be a one-off — it might just have found itself a permanent place on the Tamil Hockey League calendar.
Watch One goal championship here:
The Season, in Full
Two champions. 281 goals from the men's competition across 49 matches. A Golden Stick race that came down to the very last brace of the very last game. A Women's League title decided not by a single goal, but by the complete absence of one. And a stadium that, by the sound of it, never once let the occasion feel small.
Tamil Hockey League 2026 is done. Sports Hostel of Excellence and SRM IST are champions — and if Saturday was anything to go by, next season can't come soon enough.
As Tamil Hockey League 2026 draws to a close, we at Hockey Tiruvallur want to pause and say thank you — to every player who gave this season its goals, its shoot-outs, and its unforgettable last-minute drama; to every coach and team manager who kept twelve squads and a Women's League field of four moving through six weeks of hockey without missing a beat; to the umpires lead by Mr Mohammed Muneer & Mr Navneethakrishnan and technical officials, and ground staff at SDAT Mayor Radhakrishnan Hockey Stadium who made sure every one of these matches ran fair and true;Special thanks to Mr Sekar Manohar (President HUT & Treasurer Hockey India) for contant support and encouragement; to RSM Mr Raja and Stadium officer Mrs Nancy for prestine arrangements; to i1 Sports (Mr Santhosh, Mr Ravi, Mr Tamizh Azhagan) for carrying every match live to fans who couldn't be there in person; to our sponsors and partners, without whom none of this happens; and most of all, to the fans — the parai drummers, the good-natured hecklers, the kutty cheerleaders, and every single person who filled these stands and made Egmore feel like the only place worth being on a Saturday evening. Tamil hockey is stronger today than it was six weeks ago because of every one of you. Thank you for the season, thank you for showing up, and we'll see you next year.
Hockey Tiruvallur
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