Sonning 3s 5 - 2 Oxford 4s

Oppo: Oxford 4s
Score: 5-2
Scorers: Olly Tonks x 2, Timmy Preston x 2, Chris Roberts
Another glorious day at Fortress Sonning saw the arrival of Oxford 4s and another chance for Sonning to continue their impressive start to the campaign. The pre-match talk was a confident one, with Skipper Tonksy impressing upon the team that simple hockey would result in a positive result for the men in Sonning Blue. Combatting complacency would be the name of the game and was something that everyone should be wary of (more on this later!)

A somewhat improvised starting line-up took the field. To say Sonning set off like a train would be considered a gross understatement. Before Oxford had managed to penetrate into the Sonning half, 3 goals had been scored against them. The first was a textbook drag flick from Timmy P into the bottom right corner of the goal, the second a nice deflection on a goal bound/off target shot (still to be determined), with Tonksy slotting home the 3rd with a nice reverse stick finish.

It was at this point that complacency reared its ugly head. Sonning started to believe that a hat trick was in the offing for all those involved and the game quickly descended into players dribbling left right and centre, without passing. Having not had much to do up until this point a section of the back 3 (I will let the reader decide who this might have been) started to resemble a Loose Women panel, small complaints with no one else really sure what was being complained about. The combination of these 2 things lead to Oxford inexplicably scoring twice. I think the less said about these goals the better; needless to say they were not worldies.

Half time came and the team talk was basic in the extreme. Start playing team hockey and forget about the second portion of the first half. The team took this onboard and started to impose themselves fully in the middle of the park, with Toon and Neil Thomson doing a fantastic job of marshalling the troops and ensuring effective distribution. The 4th goal eventually came, Tonksy slotting home through a crowd of bodies at the keeper’s near post. A fifth swiftly followed, Toon firing a bouncing bomb that Barnes Wallace would have been proud of into the goal from left slip at a shorty.
Sonning saw out the game and returned to top of the table (albeit briefly, looking forward to the challenge of an away game in Newbury on the 8th November 2014.

MoM: Neil Thomson – superb distribution in the centre of midfield.
DoD: Olly Tonks - In some circles this is being described as one of the most unjust DoD of the season, in others as one of the worst/mis-timed body checks of all time on their left back. #wwe