We were better than that!

Don't get me wrong, the right team won, but the score does not portray the effort, the chances and the great work that the Mighty7s put in on a foggy afternoon in Henley.

We expected a difficult game, Henley always put out a competitive team, but following our recent games I was optimistic that we could keep it close. And so it was. Henley came out with all guns blazing. At the back, Steve, Jerry, Andy and Owen were soon under pressure, but were remarkably resilient - Rhys made some great saves. With help from our midfield of Russ, Dean and Simon, we saw wave after wave of attacks from a skilful and passing Henley side. An early goal maybe foretold the run of play for the game. Having said that, we had chances, we were able to make some attacking moves with Chris Michael and Jay showing some brilliant skills up front. We were unfortunate not to convert a few chances that we had.

But we also had a strong (if maybe over full) bench and Radar, Pricey, Hugh, Jacob and (later Dave) came on and made positive impacts on our game. But Henley were relentless and their forwards smelt blood - they had a lot of great ball skills and their pressure paid off. The first half ended with us down 3-0. You couldn't fault the effort and actually our defence and midfield had been strong, but Henley had been able to capitalise on our few mistakes.

The second half felt much stronger to me. Henley remained strong, but we seemed to have more time on the ball, made much better passing moves, took our game to them and were rewarded with a goal, after a goal-line scrabble, touched in by Pricey. A couple of short corners were unfortunately not converted and we were unlucky that other forays into the D didn't turn to goals.

Unfortunately despite the better half from us, Henley continued to make strong attacks and as much as the defence valiantly kept the ball away, Henley once again broke through, a couple of times leaving Rhys one or two on one - he had no chance, but couldn't fault his attempts to try. Final score was 7-1 - I do feel we were better than that score suggests. We were strong throughout, heads never dropped, we supported each other, we had many great chances to score and the defence was mostly solid (and did concede any short corners throughout) and we were still looking for the 2nd goal right up until the final whistle - finally we all had fun!

Many nominations for MOTM followed the game and the team collectively had a great game, although the DOTDs were almost unanimous (although I think Owen was lucky after tipping 2 past his son into own own goal!).

MOTM: Michael
DOTD: Handbags - you know who you are!

Our abandoned game against Oxford 9s has been rearranged for 7th Jan 1.30 PB - so not long to wait before our next game!