Sparticans 6 - 0 Barnes Beavers (A)

Scorers: Grant, K (4), Iffland, Ward

The Sparticans had fun in the sun on a glorious day at Duke’s Meadow on Saturday. Last season we did not enjoy our games against the Beavers, with the away game in particular being sub-optimal in just about every way. This year, Skippy had procured the away shirts so that excuse was gone. We were playing on Barnes’s main pitch, which benefitted from lines, loos and generally was a joy, and the home team provided two excellent umpires who added much to an enjoyable 70 minutes, thank you. We had nothing to blame, decided we would simply get on with it and play good hockey, and held true to our promise.

We played well this week and deserved our eventually comfortable victory. We had an early scare with Barnes converting a short corner.  But it was rightly disallowed on the basis of height, and whilst the Beavers continued to threaten throughout we held firm in an impressive defensive display and deserved our victory.

Watched by Dad, after a few sighters Kev was firing on all cylinders and finished with a four goal haul. Wardy and Steve, who both played very well, completed the scoring which included some goals from our short corners which worked well this week. Steve thought he’d scored another but his turn of pace wasn’t sufficient to beat the full time whistle and so we declared at six.

Voting for the awards took place pitchside, with Steve winning Moment of The Match for the aforementioned overtime goal, and Kev deservedly taking home Spartican of The Day. 

Most of us retired to the Barnes clubhouse – in a true London bus scenario we had our second all day breakfast match tea in a row after last week’s delight at the club. Some of us then moved to the bank to watch our Men’s 1s finish off Reading. We’ll be sorry to see Kev go to them, but wish him well in the EHL Premier League