Match report December 3 2011

Crushing defeats for three sides were slightly eased by a 3-2 win for the 1st XI at Southampton which put us second in the league with one match to go before the break

1st XI 2-1 London Academicals
Another win but another week where we made life difficult for ourselves. Without playing particularly well we went into half time with a 2 goal cushion courtesy of Rippers finishing a loose ball from our first short and Bentsy on hand to sniff out a second, a good poachers goal. Other than that, not much to shout about with CV adjudged to have deliberately stuck out a foot and earning a yellow and Coops dealing with the few shots that were on target. All we needed was a third to kill the game off but not make the most of the corners we won and very nearly paid the penalty.

Yours truly whizzed the ball off the side of the pitch from the push back but at least did not make the same mistake 30 seconds later from the restart after Southampton's first goal.... As it was and with their tails up the home side drew level after some poor defending allowed the ball to bounce around in the D which wa sharsh on Coops who made an astonishing save before the ball was tapped home from the rebound. From this point on we started to play some decent hockey, earn a few corners and eventually score with 14 minutes to go as Patrick did a Cookiey to score his first goal for the club.

We did manage to do our utmost to let the home side equalise when CB was yellow carded for what looked like a Sam Warburton tackle but was really quite inoccuous but Southampton's short corner drill was off target in the last five minutes as it had been all day and we held on.

We are now in second place, three points behind Eds and one ahead of Fareham and Havant, the latter being the in-form team. Fareham next week and so a win would give us some daylight and very pleasing to have weathered the last three games and earned three wins with no Woody and for the last two no Hunts. Rex Harrison

Ladies XI 1-3 Croydon
A fair result against a team sitting just above us in a relegation place but who looked much better than that. We were under the cosh for long periods but took the lead shortly before half-time when the Croydon defence briefly went to sleep after a re-taken hit. It was one of only two shots we managed all day. We defended with our lives and even though Croydon levelled after 50 minutes we continued to hold firm until a defensive error on the hour allowed them to take the lead and they added a crucial third two minutes later.

2nd XI 2-8 EUHC Gamblers
On paper this was a second v third clash but EUHC are a well-drilled and skilfull side who have to be the favourites to go up for the fourth time in as many seasons. We were three down before the game was nine minutes old and from there on there was no way back.. Trailing 5-1 at the break, we held our own for much of the second half, scoring a second from a flick to reduce the deficit, but three goals in the last ten minutes gave the scoreline a rather unjustified feel.

Horley 8-0 3rd XI
Whilst 8-0 was not the result any of us wanted Horley are undefeated a the top of the table and they played very well. That said the scoreline could have been much worse without some of the strong performances across the team. Adam stood up well in goal (especially as a last minute replacement) Rob and Robin were strong at the back and Captain Nick Aston made some great challenges disrupting their forward line. We were a little unfortunate not to get a consolation goal or two - and CD was definately going to score but was thwarted by the full time whistle... ;>)

Barnstormers 4-0 St Albans

Reading 11-0 Hamstrings