HEREFORD men's hockey team survived in the De Cymru & The Marches 1 after winning the final game of the season.

After a run of seven matches unbeaten they travelled to Stroud on the final weekend knowing that they needed a victory and hope that results went their way to secure safety.

Stuart Goodarzi netted a brace of goals for the visitors as they ran out 4-2 victors while Danny Mak and Adam Dukes also netted.

With Cheltenham B losing 2-0 at Cardiff & Met C the following day Hereford avoided relegation by two points.

"It was a pretty good day and I am just relieved really as we shouldn't have put ourselves in that position in the first place," said coach Andy Rogers.

"It has been quite a competitive league as the teams who have gone down have done so on 24 points and there is no side miles behind the others.

"We are pleased to stay up and we were in control of the game on Saturday going 2-0 up but when they pulled it back to 3-2 with 15 minutes to go we did worry but luckily we got the fourth goal to seal it.

"Everybody enjoyed the run of seven games unbeaten that we had. I always questioned availability but everybody was together towards the end and made sure they were committed to it.

"If we had that in the first half we would have been pushing towards the top half as we only finished six points behind third place."

At the opposite end of the league Leominster had already secured their promotion back into Conference North at the second attempt.

First team captain Jack Rowsell said that his side had a fantastic season with Dan Petrie top scoring with 25 goals for the campaign.

"It has been a fantastic year and I would have been disappointed with anything other than promotion," said Rowsell.

"We had a consolidation year last year after relegation the previous year."