Half-time 1-2

Full-time 1-3
MoM: Rafi Rosenfield with votes for Alex Holmes, Chris Ray, Neil Murphy & Simon Holmes.

Despite being down to 12 before the start of the game, we were just glad everyone had otherwise made the game on time, given the massive queues for petrol at the top of Snakes Lane!

We welcomed Chris and Rob Ray, Fin Sheridan-Licata and Wayne Plummer, all making their debuts for 5As – great to have you on board chaps.

It was also great to see MS Patti making a return to East Leagues and he started with aplomb, placing a trademark short corner strike in the bottom right corner, after only a couple of minutes played. 

After a great start from Patti’s strike, St. Albans came back into it strongly, testing the back 3 of Giles Weblin, Alex Holmes, Chris Ray (playing at R back for the first time and doing a super job), joined by Neil Murphy at sweeper. Some really solid defending, especially with Neil tidying up any loose ball, just couldn’t quite keep St.Albans at bay and they scored twice, taking us to a 1-2 deficit at half time.

Better composure in the second half saw us come back into it with Rob Ray, Simon Holmes and Rafi Rosenfield (who had his best game since coming into playing adult hockey, producing some great interceptions and distributing well on the right) pulling the strings to get us back into the game. Unfortunately, despite great running from Wayne Plummer, Sohan Dhana, who also made a number of quality turnovers, and Fin, joined by Patti’s constant threat in the D and at short corners, we were unable to break through St. Albans defence. We had a number of short corners but shots and deflections went agonisingly wide. 

St. Albans finished up poaching another goal from a short corner in the last few minutes and went away 3-1 winners. No complaints about the score line but lots of positives to take out of the game. 

Many thanks to Mike Burman and Tony Shiret for umpiring.