Men's 2nd XI Vs Derwent 3

The Mighty 2's 1 v 3 Derwent 3's

Gary Pickering reports
Apparently I have the honour of writing this brief recollection of events from a cold and overcast Bingham today as I got hit on the ankle twice by the same person and on both occasions had to go for a sit down to recover. Instead of sympathy I get the DoD award – cheers 

The 2’s welcomed back Mark R, Sam C, Nathan and a debut to Fin who all stepped in to help out fill the vacancies of other players either unavailable or called up to the 1’s.
Maybe because of the change to personnel, back to a 4-4-2 formation and some people playing out of position; we got off to our typical slow start. As a team we made 3 simple errors in the first 15 minutes and Derwent took their chances, rode their luck a little bit and were suddenly 3-0 up. We were a bit shell shocked as we had some chances ourselves in this period, mainly through Nathan using his pace on the right and getting the ball into dangerous areas, and also through good simple hockey between Ian and Fin. As per our last game we struggled to turn good possession and persistent attacking play into clear chances on goal. The first half continued with South playing the better hockey with Derwent countering, but Derwent never looked like scoring again with solid defending from Batty and Brian. South had 2 very good chances in the first half but again nothing quite went right for us.

The team talk at half time was up-beat as we knew that if we could get an early second half goal that this match was game on and was still very winnable.
The second half continued much like the first with South having the vast majority of possession, the best of the chances and multiple short corners. In fact Derwent barely entered our D in the second half and I can’t remember them having a clear shot on goal.

Again we continued to generate good chances but when the final ball came in we never had the right players where they needed to be to finish off or the final ball was just a yard too wide, on another day we would have scored 5 or 6.

Eventually we got a deserved goal quite late in the game with about 15 minutes left. The build up to the goal was sublime, made pretty much by Fin and Ian linking up once more. Fin picked the ball up just inside their 25 from wide on the left, he went past 3 players, and then laid off a simple and perfect pass to Ian who was on the edge of the D who fired it towards goal. Grozzy was there, as was a defender, they both went for the 50:50 ball, both probably got something on it, in it went and Grozzy was not shy in claiming it.

We continued to pile on the pressure in the last 10 minutes looking for a way back, but it was not quite our day. We played well, had a lot of opportunities, several short corners but not enough goals. Stand out players today were Nathan and his skill and pace (something the 2’s haven’t seen for a while) and Fin’s debut. All game he played simple, solid hockey, barely made a mistake and looked very much at ease at this level. Well done Fin 

Thanks to Dick and Ray for umpiring.