New faces make mark in warm-up win

1st XI 3-1 Mid Sussex
A useful first run out of the season against a spirited Mid Sussex side who like us were short of a few key players and most notably Jmaes Myers in goal.

The missing faces from our ranks gave us the opportunity to play three new faces, all of whom scored, two of whom are OCs. With the likelihood of three of last year's leavers joining and two other OCs, the joining of seven true OCs is very positive.

As one would expect in a game at this time of year we made basic errors but these were outweighed by some super hockey. A half time scoreline of 2-0 with goals from Jade Pierce, who popped home a rebound from a short, and a cool finish from Mike Roper following our most incisive move of the match, was a little flattering as Mid Sussex missed 2 very easy chances and could have gone in 2-1 up at half time.

The first 20 minutes of the second half saw us dominate play and Andy Farguar added our third follwing excellent work from Cookiey down the left who skinned his half back and set up Andy.

Our lack of fitness showed in the last quarter and Mid Sussex pulled one back from a short but we held on comfortably and had a number of gilt edged chances to add to the scoreline. The MS keeper had an excellent second half, redeeming himself after in his words "a poor first half".

Thank you to Keith, Matt and Houghie, the latter's first visit to TD for 15 years, for umpiring. We do not normally see three umpires in total for our pre-season games and so to have three for one game was a luxury.

Next week we play the three first round Surrey Cup games with some tesing matches in the offing

Training starts this Wednesday at 19.30 for the whole club.