Men’s 2s Cruise to Pre-Season Victory over Maidenhead
By Billy Winter
Maidenhead M1 1 – 6 SHC Men’s 2s
The boys travelled out to Maidenhead in a final pre-season game, making a good test of how far we’ve come as a squad in a repeat fixture of the 4-4 debacle in the league last season and to put to bed the disarray of last weekend.
The average age of the squad took a dive this weekend with many fan favourites citing unavailability. Beau and Bean decided to please ‘the man’, Doidge spent the weekend in coastal rehab, Oskar opted for a slow-medium right arm over, whilst rumour has it Birdie tried his hand at the GB netball girls, again. Evans, James had a tooth ache and I believe Oli ‘the Chair’ Witts had a maths lesson.
Coach Creed gave an inspired team talk, but sadly this was missed by most of the lads. Jamie had one last crack at some game time for the 1s before deciding to play hard to get. Rhys will argue for having a prompt arrival, but a skeptical ‘I’m here’ message 20 minutes after the meet time tells otherwise. Evans, Scott followed closely behind, whose tardiness I can only assume is due to a lovers’ tiff with loyal M2s supporter and life partner Baker; who could not be seen or more importantly heard. Finally pulling up the rear was Vehicle Anderson, containing Max, Ore, Billy W and Dan F; who sheepishly cruised in on the stroke of PB after a tactical stop at Budgens to replenish some depleted livers.
Staggeringly we played pretty well, turns out Sam Spencer is quite good at hockey, Foxy and Jamie showed what they’ve learnt at training with some astute squarials. Bish, Finn and Jakey continued their dominance in Midfield and Scotty got a full game (finally). Add that to the U16 forward line of Dan H and Petter and we found ourselves 5-0 up at half time.
We decided to mix it up for the second half and adopted a more ‘UFC’ approach to our press in order to take in some of the local culture. The rest of the game was less emphatic, Ore ‘we were playing zonal?’ Ogunlana tipped his hat to the late, great Mark Haycroft and conceded before touching the ball, which was only answered by an unusually calm finish by Dan F for his second of the day to bring the final score to 6-1.
In short, the game ended as another day at the office for the Mighty 2s, with boys present stepping up (special mention to Rhys for a strong shift at full back) and the kids yet again showing their class; though we probably need to work our corners. All in, a good indicator of the progress we’ve made as a squad, but I feel confident in saying we look forward to not making the trip again this year.
Goals: Sam Spencer (1), Billy Winter (1), Will Petter (1), Dan Hunt (1), Dan Foulger (2)
POM/DOD votes were few and far between this weekend, so I’ll give my own.
POM – Dan Hunt – a goal to save my blushes and countless assists. Even if you had six feet, I’m not sure you’d put one wrong, well done mate!
DOD – Dan Foulger – two goals is never enough #hatrickavoidance