Mazarelo keen to show more evidence of Old Georgians quality

When Old Georgians defeated Bloemendaal last October to reach the ABN AMRO EHL FINALS, it was not just a landmark win but a validation of the quality in their ranks.

Crucial to that validation was the remarkable performance of goalkeeper James Mazarelo for whom this was a formative moment just a couple of months after his high profile move to the club from Surbiton.

Amid a hectic calendar, he admits things had been disjointed up to that point but the KO16 in Barcelona was a vital moment for him to truly step into the heart of the team.

“That first trip away was huge,” he says. “We’d had a good pre‑season, but with the international stuff we were still a bit disjointed.

The weekend didn’t just build confidence. It wove him into the fabric of the squad; the shared meals, the downtime, the pressure, the celebrations. Integration wasn’t a gradual process; Barcelona accelerated it.

“Barcelona was the first proper chance to spend time together, four or five days with the whole group, getting to know people I didn’t know so well.

“It made a massive difference and I loved being part of the group. We’ve got a shared desire to be really successful. Hopefully we can show that this season.”

In a hyper competitive contest, Mazarelo made a number of special saves when the Bloemendaal game was in the balance and, ultimately, made the difference in the shoot-out to advance to the FINALS.

“It was kind of our first big test to see where our game was in relation to the rest of Europe against top quality opposition.

“We look at our squad on paper and think, yeah, we’re really, really good,” he says. “But until you’ve actually played one of the top teams, you don’t really know and I always prefer evidence over confidence.”

“I always prefer evidence over confidence.”

James Mazarelo

That evidence arrived in the form of a composed, aggressive, intelligent goalkeeping display, the kind that doesn’t just keep you in games, but wins them. From the outside, some of those saves looked like pure instinct.

From the inside, Mazarelo was reading the game at high speed.

“You can anticipate what’s going to happen to an extent,” he explains. “From the way someone shapes up, the angle of their stick, the line of the deflection… sometimes the picture becomes really clear really quickly. That’s when I can be aggressive.”

He recalls one moment in particular, denying an Elian Mazkour close-range touch.

“There was a crash ball in, and from the body position you could see roughly where the deflection was going to go. That allowed me to close down the right angle. Those are the situations I enjoy – reading it early, making a decisive choice.”

Indeed, Mazarelo is a keen student of the goalkeeping art, one he puts a lot of time into building his knowledge bank so he can prepare for future scenarios.

“It’s about reading play, understanding shooting tendencies, deciding when to trust your defenders and when to take the space. You can read some player’s body positions and so I use a lot of those cues to influence my decision-making.

“Goalkeeping is always evolving and what we’re doing in four or five years could look totally different.”

James Mazarelo saves during Old Georgians win over HC Bloemendaal. Picture: Frank Uijlenbroek/World Sport Pics

It is something he has been focusing on since swapping football gloves for foam pads between the posts in primary school in his hometown in Manchester.

“I was a football goalie to start but my school randomly decided to enter a hockey team and because I was the tall goalie, I was chucked in there and that was it.”

Only a brief outfield experiment ending with two back‑stick ‘goals’ and an umpire “taking pity on me because I was so happy” punctuated his time in goal as he rose through the ranks at Bowdon and England’s underage teams before making it to Euro silver and the Olympic Games with Great Britain.

Now he is hoping to make a bigger mark on the EHL amid a whirlwind 2026 already, taking in the Hockey India League, Pro League in Valencia and World Cup qualifiers in Egypt.

“It’s been a little bit all over the place,” he says. “But it’s nice to settle back now, get into some club hockey and build a big block of games.”

Last week’s return was emphatic, a solid 4-1 win over Hampstead & Westminster that helped the group reconnect after a long winter split by international commitments.

And two weeks from now, Old Georgians head to Den Bosch for the EHL FINALS, where they’ll meet reigning champions Gantoise.

“They’re an incredible team with big threats,” Mazarelo says. “We’ll dive into detail, build a strong game plan – like we did for Bloemendaal – and hopefully take the game to them. Knockout hockey is knockout hockey. You just never know.”

Waiting on the other side, potentially, is a semi-final showdown with his former club Surbiton.

“From an English hockey point of view, that would be amazing,” he says. “Two English teams in the semi‑final guarantees one in the final — that hasn’t happened for a long time. Obviously we want it to be us, but it would be huge for English hockey and for the ranking points.”

Barcelona may have been the moment that integrated him into Old Georgians, but Den Bosch offers the chance to elevate the story; for Mazarelo, for the club, and for English club hockey.

“We’ve shown what we can do,” he says. “Now it’s about doing it again when it matters.”

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