WEYMOUTH Hockey Club will not be holding its well-established festival at Redlands this Easter weekend.

The decision to scrap the event, which has been running for more than 50 years, was revealed to Echosport by club member Andy Stiles, who believes “it’s just a shame that we have not been able to keep it running”.

Speaking on behalf of the club, Stiles did however state that there will be plans to re-launch the festival next year.

On the decision to pull the plug on the 2016 edition, Stiles said: “Basically, we have unfortunately had to cancel the festival this year.

“Partly due to the weather and, with Easter being so early, with teams not wanting to take the risk of coming down for a festival that would be cold and wet.

“There just has not been enough teams taking it up this year.

“I think we had 12 or 13 teams signed up, we really needed 20 as our first target and normally we would have 35 teams.

“We were well under what we would want as a minimum and well under what we would expect to achieve.

“Rather than having something that would be underpowered and maybe not as enjoyable, we took the decision to say ‘look we haven’t got enough teams to run it this year, here is your money back, we are really sorry and please give us another chance when we re-launch’.”

Asked whether the festival would return in the future, Stiles added: “There is a plan to re-launch it.

“Whether it’s in Easter, May or August we can’t say yet because we don’t know who is going to be running it.

“But there is definitely an ambition that the festival will be back, it’s just a shame that we have not been able to keep it running this year.”