Womens 3s Match Reports
A match to forget.
So moving on, to Saturday night... Jackie prevented any major problems that night, by providing her normal fantastic teas and ensuring we were all set for a big one - THANKS JACKIE! We were impressed but not scared by other fancy dress efforts;
Tug of war is not an olympic sport... but the 4s did look good. For anyone who's wondering they had a downhill advantage, all 3 times.. ;)
Morph suits - far too little left to the imagination...
Urine samples - inspriational!
But at the end of the day, how can you beat inflatable gloves, head guards, mouth guards, big thing to hit (what's that called?!), silk red gowns and finally personalised names which sealed the deal for us - THANK YOU Lindsey and Anna!!
Apparently we played wibbly wobbly... Apparently we crowd surfed...Appratently we ended up at Adventure with pingpong balls in our mouths...
Apprently Sunday happened...
Thanks to the social secs for an excellent night!
We beat the oppo off the pitch as we turned up for teas and they didn't and we consumed our own body weight in chips and cakes- huzzah! (AS)
Reedy, Anna, Emily, Nicola, Diane, Kiera, Georgie, Ellie, Emma, Jenn, Vicky, Sarah, Kate, Roxsanne
Once upon a time, a long way from here (all the way in Zone 4) lived Nic the Canadian Brown Bear and Jen the Koala Bear. One day Brown Bear and Koala Bear went out to play a game of hockey with their zoo mates. They left their bear cave and headed to the station. It wasn't too long until they were on their way to meet their animal buddies. It was only a few minutes into the Bear's journey before the Koala Brown bear spied a honey bee vending machine on the platform. Before Brown Bear could stop her, Koala bear had jumped up and ran off the train towards the pot of honey. Oh no! While our friend was trying to get the honey out of the pot, the train doors closed and the train set off, leaving Koala Brown Bear on the station. "Oh dear", said Koala Bear. "I will need to eat all the honey by myself".
The usual suspects
After a successful warm up and Reedy looking sharp with her getup (deerstalker hat) we were ready - striving for the win. Starting strong we came out and scored from a world performance play which started from the back, connecting passes all the way through the layers of the team to put THD on the score board. In the last 5 minutes of the 1st half Academicals gave us a little scare by scoring an equalizer. Going into the break on the back foot it took rallying words to get us to come out fighting. That coupled with a tactical decision to play our sweeper higher we expected to go back into an evenly matched game. Within minutes we began to realize that we were the dominant team, found our form and came out of nowhere to score 4 triumphant goals - the second of which was from a brilliantly executed short corner - some might say it was poetry in motion.
Kate, Sarah, Vicky, Jenn, Ellie, Georgie, Shell, Buckers, Reedy, Nicola, Kiera, Cad Man, Anna
But we needed have worried. The signs were good from the arrival with the surprising news we were playing on the decent water based astro, rather than the ridiculously poor sand pitch. An efficient and quick warm up - with some good practice short corners and we were ready to go.
The first half was very even, with THD playing strongly and putting into practise training routines. Though the opposition had a few outstanding players, a bit of hockey brain usage saw us playing around them. But then, a ball to the head enforced the substitution of stand-in defender Weedy and in the reorganisation of the reorganisation what to do on defence short corners clearly got missed! One nil to Surbiton going into half time.
Some strong words from Ellie (and an impromptu shower during the pitch watering) later, and we were determined to take advantage of our superior fitness and ball speed. A strong equaliser from Vicky, and we were back in the game - only for us to be a soft goal down again two minutes later - not what the coach ordered. We continued to press strongly, with Michelle getting the equaliser, and THD were definitely finishing the stronger team - with a couple of shots going agonisingly close.
Great team spirit in coming back twice from a deficit, and moments of champagne hockey and passing means the team is on the move. Many thanks for the 2s for their support. Roll on the next match with London Academicals and getting some serious points on the board! (Em C)
Emma, Nicola, Ellie, Georgie, Vicky, Sarah, Michelle, Emily, Jenn, Kiera, Flic, Weedy
Apologies for the shoddy account of the game I tend to forget what has actually happened by tea time at the clubhouse! The following events may or may not actually be in chronological order, but I'm pretty sure all of it happened :)...We started very strong with our first goal coming from a fast break away. We then scored again on a short corner (yay!) with a goal from Kate and a little help from the oppo's stick. By the time the whistle blew for the end of the first half we were 2 - nil up. The second half brought a very flukey goal from Wimbeldon that bounced off the corner of the post and into our goal. We answered back with another goal. In the last 10 minutes or so we may have lost it a wee bit and ended up with the ball in our D more than we would have liked...A short corner via a clumsy foot was given away in the last few seconds of the game by yours truly (oopsy!) To be fair to Wimbeldon, it was an awesome strike that ended up hitting the back board. We weren't too upset though as we still had the win ending the game 3-2. A shout out to Kiera and Ellie who both had great games, but the big congrats goes to the Man of the Match Georgie, who had a wicked game in the mid field! Well done Georgie!!! (DL)
Emma, Emily, Matilda, Kiera, Anna, Diane, Michelle, Ellie, Georgie, Vicky, Kate, Sarah, Roxsanne
We learnt a lot this weekend;
-that googling Thom Evans is very distracting, even on a Saturday night (don't try this at work)
-that 'subtle' can be interpreted in many different ways...
-that we need to work on short corners (boring, moving on...)
-that playing hockey means our legs won't always be that pretty, but they won't wobble, much ;)
-that hockey shouldn't be played in that ridiculous heat
-that we should drink more before turning up late to pub golf
-that a golf cap can fit neatly into a handbag ;)
-that Sarah's husband can bake awesome cakes! (thank you!)
-that Snellers is a nutter for agreeing to umpire on her birthday (thank you!)
-that we really really miss Jackie's teas!
-that captains shouldn't write match reports...
(EC)
Kate, Ellie, Emily, Sarah, Kiera, Diane, Nicola, Jen, Vicky S, Michelle, Anna, Georgie, Vicky A
A great start to the season and an encouraging amount of goals scored - just a shame we lost. A few things we'll learn though from this first match though...when the oppo provide 2 umpires be ready for some biased decisions: if the ball hits the oppos feet on a number of occasions in the D then it isn't necessarily a short corner and when the ball hits your stick it could be called up as feet and a p-corner be awarded against yougrrr!
We'll get them next time no fear.(AS)
Next match: Sat 1st Oct vs Wayfarers 3s @ 5pm, DC
Vicky A , Anna, Emily C, Diane, Kat, Georgie, Ellie, Emily S, Sarah, Emma, Kate, Vicky S, Nicola