SONNING 0 - 0 HENLEY
9th February 2008

Well this was an interesting one, all in all, despite the score.

When you here the words "follow that car", you don't expect to be going the wrong way out of the Uni car park for a match at Bracknell, but that is exactly what happened to Carl Ayres and his car load of players. Mind you, if he'd followed the right car, it would have helped! Still, he retraced his steps and finally caught up with us.

Next up was the lack of opposition. Unusual not to have heard that Henley couldn't provide a team, so was the location of our 'home' match the issue? Yep, sure enough, they turned up at the Uni (we're blaming their fixture secretary for that one Jon). Jeremy Matheson had, in the meantime, shot off to the Bracknell Hockey Club just in case Henley had gone there, but there was no sign of them. Keeping a close eye on the time was Jeff Samuels as he had to shoot off to work after umpiring. Would there be a game? Would he get to work?

Well, eventually we heard that they were on their way to us, so all we had to do was to extend the allocated pitch time by an hour. Phew - and we hadn't hit a ball in anger at this point.

The build up to the match seemed to be more exciting than the hockey. Although we shaded it on possession over the 70 minutes, we couldn't score that all important goal (would that be our undoing come the season's end?) There were battles all over the pitch, though the tone was generally competitive rather than nasty, and we know that umpires' decisions don't always go the way you think they should, but I doubt Jeff thought he'd end up having to calm down a very heated Henley player who really should know better AND he was having a go at the wrong umpire anyway. Well done Jeff!

We have a strong defence and they were all on form yet again. On the rare occasion that Henley got a shot in, there was Andrew Bowyer kicking or pushing the ball away. It has to be said that our goalie has had very few matches to really trouble him BUT he's there, ever alert, and with a save when we need him. Our single figure 'goals against' tally is very much down to his presence and the great relationship he has with the defence - keep it up Andrew!

So, while I think they'll be happy with 1 point, we see it as 2 points dropped - hey ho.
 

Man of the Match: went to John Flint who was a great anchor at the bottom of our diamond and a driving force when going forward.
A big thanks goes to our umpire Jeff Samuels - how he kept his cool with a Henley hot head, I don't know.