4-Minute Warm Up leads to 4-Goal fortune !

Today’s game against City of Bath B (Top of the League) was special for a variety of reasons, the most important of which, was the first appearance of the season (and welcome return) of our Captain, Ed Watson. Ed had clearly heard about our previous weeks performance (v Yate) and the ability to hit a barn door from 2 feet! So he arranged for all of us to arrive earlier than normal in Bath in order to practise short corners and do some shooting (at goal I assume !!) .

So with great intentions, we all gathered in Bath, for a feverish four minute warm up! Just enough stretching to ensure that the we didn’t pull a muscle whilst putting on our shinpads - No time for short corners, a quick few points about the press, straight into a clash of sticks and a mighty roar of “3-2-1 MARLBOROUGH”!

It was very clear to see why City of Bath B were top of the league – good structure, swift passing and a strong threat through the middle. It was going to be a tough game of hockey. Marlborough A would have to play our best hockey of the season in order to match City of Bath, let alone beat them – and that’s exactly what we did! Many elements of our game finally clicked and started to perform, starting with the pressing game lead by the ever energetic Justin Metcalfe and the ever young Dan Crossman! Swift, simple passing, strong communication and tenacious tackling (Ollie Davies took a 2 min rest for one of his!), all set the tone for the first 10 minutes – and at that point Marlborough A started to believe that they had a real chance to win the game. The defence looked impenetrable with Charlie Ponder moving to his natural position in defence, flanked by the agility, guile and grit of Rob and Keith.

Marlborough A opened the scoring with a fine taken goal from Mark Kinder, but it was nothing like his stunning second to take Marlborough into a 2-0 lead. Mark just ran on the pitch from the subs bench, sprinted forward, Ed Watson split their midfield and defence with a searing pass from just inside his own half, Mark gathered it on the right side, just outside the D, two touches and BANG ! 2-0 “back of the net” – great substitution ! Half Time 2-0 up.

2-0 Up was nothing less than we deserved and the second half continued in the same way. We went 3-0 up when Dan Crossman pushed up the left, passed inside to Andy D near the top of the D, who drifted right, slipped it back inside to Chris Newton who scored smartly in the bottom right hand corner. Note - Chris can score goals from further than 4 feet!

4-0 up occurred when Ollie Davies surged up the left side passed several defenders all the way to the by-line, and just when you thought he reached a dead end, he struck a perfect reverse stick hit hard across the goal with Justin Metcalfe perfectly poised to place it away at the back post. Another, great goal with some fine passing and inter-play that started much earlier up the pitch.

Then we had 3 Minutes to forget....! Something happened to move the score from 4-0, to 4-2! City of Bath came back hard at us and scored following a short corner rebound strike and a reverse stick shot from the top of the D. Both goals fired up Bath, who came back even harder still, and the only ones to mildly panic were those on the side who thought the score was now 3-2 with less than 10 mins to go (you know who you are !).

Finally, 3 minutes to remember.....! We all knew the game was reaching a successful conclusion when Dan Crossman took the game by the scruff of the neck and decided to take on the corner flag and as many other defenders as possible. It was a pleasure to watch such silky skills in action, as 1-2-3 4 defenders tried to muscle in and wrestle the ball from him. This lead to an interesting array of verbals on and off the pitch –but the only story that mattered on the day, was that Marlborough A had played their best hockey of the season, against a very good side and had come out on top. Great effort from everyone.

Marlborough News Online Man of the Match – Mark Kinder (pushed all the way by Charlie Ponder and Charlie Hawley).