Report by Tom Murphy
3-2 W

The 2s final home game of the season saw us face relegation-contenders Epsom 1s.

The first 10 minutes of the game was some of the best hockey we’ve played all season, with an attacking move falling to Drew Burkin who slotted it bottom corner on the reverse to claim his 32nd of the season.

Just minutes later, Lum Chau got on the end of an aerial and cut inside, beating a couple of players and offloading it, only for the ball to fall right back to him on the edge of the d on his reverse, in an identical position to Drew’s opener, where the power of the shot was enough to take it through the keepers legs. 2-0.

From there, the onslaught of cards started. Barney picked up the first green of the day for a particularly firm tackle on the halfway line, which was then upgraded to a yellow on his way off. Lewis Hollett then apparently body checked someone which earned him a green card. With us a man down for a long period, Epsom got a goal back through a good deflection after a hopeful crash ball into our D. 2-1. Drew then got his first green for tackling the opposition defender (how dare he?!)

We started the 2nd half 2-1 up with 10 men on the pitch, but the card was over and Drew was back on 30 seconds in. Another 30 seconds later, however, Drew earns his second card of the game and we go back to 10 men.

We then break through into the D, where the keeper takes out our forward through on goal. Barney Collier then assumed that a stroke had been given and so out of pure petulance he decided to flick the ball into the goal anyway. Little did he know, the umpire never gave a foul and barney had just scored our 3rd of the game. He then proceeded to celebrate in front of the defender who had been in his ear the whole game, only to find out he ran to the wrong defender and celebrated in his face for no reason.

We didn’t make it easy for ourselves, however, as the cards kept coming. Lewis Hollett picked up his second card and first yellow of the game as Andy Fell picked up the teams 3rd yellow. Drew then decided to dribble past a player, which obviously led to a yellow card for him. The Epsom coach put it best when he said to drew, ‘How dare you do a good 3d skill, that’s always going to be a yellow’.

Neil prior then joined in from the side of the pitch, earning a yellow card for the southgate bench.

Along side the card fest, we were also playing hockey (although not very well). Epsom gained some momentum against our 8-man side but Savvas was equal to every attempt on goal.

To relieve the pressure, I chucked a few huge aerials, each of them landing at the feet of the first defender.

Epsom did manage to get a goal back, however, making it 3-2 and with 5 consecutive corners, they threatened to equalise. All the corners were defended well though, with some great saves from Savvas, a couple of picks on the line from Hugo and one great save from Fellys knee.

All in all, it was quite an interesting game with a few too many cards. The real winner of this game was the fines pot, with us somehow racking up a total of 5 yellows and 3 greens.

Man of the match probably would have been Savvas, had he not been there for the votes. The actual MoM was then a draw between Ollie Wickham, Mark (webby) Ellis and Tom Batchelor. DoD was also a draw (again?!) between Luke Collier (representing barney), Neil prior, and Drew Burkin.