Sonning Classics 1 - 3 Jersey

Health warning - this report was created by the varied talents of the SHC Classics team. Each contributed a paragraph (or nine). It may evolve over time...

For the few weeks preceding this fixture, you'd have been hard pressed to find a more excited bunch of over 35s in the Sonning area - this even beat the announcement of George Clooney's arrival in the area.

As soon as we knew that we'd be travelling to Jersey, every member of the team became a logistics ninja. Children, husbands, families, stag dos, parties - all were carefully organised into a safe place so that 17 of Sonning's finest could travel to Jersey in search of either: 1. a very, very good time, 2. a win, or even better 3. both.

Option number 1 was pursued from the moment that the Ladies 2s completed their game. I'm not sure what was in their 'cups of tea', but spirits were high when we all piled into the bus. Spirits were even higher once Galli had cracked open her selection of magnificent cocktail pouches. After a rousing chorus of 'We love you Ruthie' for the brilliant Ruth Cunningham, we set off to Southampton airport.

The car passengers arrived at the airport first after Jill finally took the turn for the airport car park. A quick glimpse of Craig Charles and then straight to the bar.
 
Sinead (the minibus had arrived) came racing into the bar in search of ice for her burn (don't ask) and was grabbed to look after drinks while the car passengers went to check in with the others as they clearly had had a different priority on arrival at the airport. Good job Sinead was looking after drinks or we would have forgotten to go back to find her!
 
Through security and to the bar for selfies with Craig Charles. To the plane – a chatty journey, making good use of the selfie stick but no drinks (Pikey had instructed the cabin crew!) Pikey refused poor Craig’s request for her to hold his hand on take-off (clearly not a Red Dwarf fan). Not sure how many drinks had been consumed on the mini bus but the queue of Sonning players waiting for the toilet had to be disbanded at one point to prevent overloading at the front of the plane. Following a safe landing we collected our bags and headed for the number 15 bus.

After landing at Jersey airport, the gang headed to collect the baggage and after Emma had a little spin round on the carousel, all bags were reclaimed.  The next part of the organisers plans was to catch the No 15 bus so we headed outside just as a No 15 pulled up.  With the right change in hand (Annie had instructed us that we needed £1.80) everyone boarded the double decker and headed upstairs.  Mei was one of the last and after putting her bag in the luggage rack looked at the only person downstairs and asked "Where did they go?".  The 30 min journey to St Hellier went quickly (and with more alcohol) and at the bus station in Liberation Square we all departed outside our posh hotel Pomme D'Or. Annie had uncovered a real gem with history as the hotel played a key part in the liberation in 1945 due to it's location at the harbour - i'm not sure all the tour party were that interested in the history as there was no alcohol involved!!!!  Check-in completed, most people were then found at the bar for a pre-dinner drink.     

After beautifying ourselves (which was no easy feat) we all came down to dinner in the cafe bar. We sat in our natural 4-4-2 formation and dined on our preordered meals with lashings of red wine, G & Ts and water. The banter flowed and our attention was drawn to the club across the road but we resisted and settled down to a cosy classics evening of "guess the capital city" quiz. The intelligent ones amongst us surfaced. In particular Jilly Bean. Although AJ's inspired answer to the Capital of America: Disneyland (!!) surely topped Jilly.  
Eventually they shut the restaurant and those still up shuffled into the residents bar......

So after Jilly Bean "Dark Horse" had educated all of the rest of us on all of the capital cities of the world, and we decided Currencies of the world was a challenge too far, the evening started to mellow out. The view of the club across the road was enticing and the hardcore dancers in the group were sorely tempted to go and throw some shapes along with the queue of girls in short skirts...however we reminded ourselves we were athletes....and carried on "hydrating" instead.

The youngsters, and AJ, started a breakout crew on the comfy seats and were no doubt wondering whether to hit the jaeger bombs. While the older and wiser possee cracked open the next bottle of wine.  Some sense prevailed though and our most committed team members started to hit the hay. Soon after we were "encouraged" to leave the restaurant and make our way to the residents bar,  our numbers seemed to dwindle on the long journey around the corner and in a shocking turn of events, even the Horn retired! Eight stragglers hit the residents bar where we made friends with the Yocals,  helped the neighbourhood drunk get served at the bar and continued giving our abdominals a workout with plenty of belly laughing....

Warning: From 11pm onwards things for the O35s got a little blurry so this report has had to rely exclusively on photographic evidence:

23:54 - An incriminating video was found as proof that alcoholic beverages were consumed that evening – shocking! The footage shows a few suspects dipping their tongue in unidentified substances distributed by a well-known supplier in the Jersey area: Anneliese “the oldest ninja” Churchill who is said to have connections with farmers in the island. This triggered not only plenty of laughs but a lot of drooling, especially on those aging individuals with fake teeth or lip fillers. Sources recall that the overall winner of said competition was the rarely seen gangster Maria “big senseless tongue” Willers. Other incriminated suspects in the scene where Claire “I’m free for a night” Gallimore, Jill “If it’s a competition I MUST win” Ngo, Ruth “I don’t care enough” Purdy, Michelle “#C” Leadbetter and Rita “aaaaa” Car Hire. Source: https://vimeo.com/119746485
 
01:21 - After police arrested a few of these individuals (ok… we were kicked out of the bar and told to go to bed) the rest of the suspects found asylum in a room. Sadly (or thankfully) there is no photographic evidence to date of this occurrence.
 
03:07 – Some photographic evidence at this time of night. Maybe hockey was discussed, or drinks, or bums, or poo, or politics. No recollection of the facts, sorry!

After all of us were in bed by 9am on the Saturday evening, Sunday morning should have been a chance to go for a jog and wander down to the sea front! Arrivals at breakfast were slow and spaced out (much like some of the team!) but it was leisurely and enjoyable. A quick change and we were off on a Minibus tour of the island. Anne’s newest venture “A guide to the Channel Islands” was amusing – we took in Guernsey, Sark and Alderney all in a 25 minute drive. The driver kindly dropped us off in the right place and after Pikey had paid the man for his services (oo er!!) we were off to find the changing rooms ready for our battle.

After this brief bus tour of Jersey we rocked up at the sports centre car park. Heading off to the main sports centre someone had the foresight to ask a passing 'Jerseyite' where the changing rooms were for the hockey pitch. They sent us away from the sports centre towards a block of small football changing rooms. Unfortunately they were all locked so Captain Pike and Deputy Oke set off to the main sports centre to see what was what. The rest of the troops hung around on the corner of the block in the biting wind.

By the time Captain Pike and Deputy Oke returned (we're convinced they sat and had a cup of hot chocolate and a cake whilst they were there), some of the troops had put on most of the clothes they had with them!

We piled into a changing room not much bigger than those at Henley. No mean feat with 17 of us plus bags. Suffice to say if anyone bent over to get something out of their bag an unfortunate teammate got a facefull!

After lots of 'excuse me's and 'sorry's we managed to sort ourselves out. For a moment we thought Emma was going to play in her jeans. Wise girl waited till half the team vacated the room and so could get changed easily.

So on to the pitch.

By the time we got to the pitch we realised we didn't have as long to warm up as we expected. It obviously took us longer than anticipated trying to get 16 people changed in a room as big as a postage stamp (only 16 as  manager Maips didn't need to change, but she did provide the music!).

It looked as though the opposition had been warming up for some time but in true Sonning style, we warmed up and were ready to take on the challenge of the unknown.

We absorbed a lot of pressure for the first 5 minutes before settling into some good hockey, playing well together, the ball going wide and down the line and in behind the defenders.  We had a lot of possession and 4 minutes before half time we broke through the defence and scored - a nicely taken goal by Shinners.  Jersey come back at us but we soaked up the pressure, however, 1 minute before half time Jersey were awarded a penalty stroke (we're not sure why) but this was stopped with a super save by super-cool Miche and we closed half time 1-0 up.

With a goal in hand, a confident half-time chat and some posh organic sweets from Mei, the team started the second half with a win in sight. Following a few hit it and hope grass hockey shots, the bouncy pitch did us no favours and we gave the ball away. Their first goal was so sleek I don't quite remember it but their second made a lasting impression. Number 8 took a few shoulder high shots at us across the D and whilst probably defending herself from the ball, one of their players batted it into the goal. Not happy that they had only scored two goals past us, Ruth Purdy was determined to help them to a third but - luckily for us - her attempt was saved by the post! Unfortunately,they did then follow up with another goal. Maips did some galliant subbing of our 16 strong squad but, and although we all tried our best, it was not meant to be. Final score: Sonning 1 - Jersey 3. But at least Emma remembered Lars' stick!

The Jersey players were kind enough to give us all lifts to the venue for teas, which was a lovely venue a couple miles down the road. The teas were a chicken thai green curry and/or chilli con carne with rice and chips which was all very tasty. We all raised a glass to Pikey and Annie for their amazing efforts in organising such a great hockey trip.

There were loads of nominations for muff which surprisingly didn’t include Sophie. It was quite close with Coops 2nd for going to bed early the night before with the horn of plenty but joint 1st was Ruth for her over excited defending, almost putting the ball in our own goal but hitting the post and Emma who didn’t take her stick to Jersey, after Saturdays game handing it to one of the ‘youngsters’ to put in her stick bag thinking that she was also going on the trip!

Player went to Rita for her absolutely solid defending and awesome tackles!

The Jersey team left us to it at some point, but the banter and beer kept flowing. Pikey had prepared a rather excellent quiz where we had to guess everyone's middle names. Pint of sherry if you can guess who's middle name is Kestell.

Shortly after that, and fuelled by a lot of 'enthusiasm', the girls decided that they should spell out #COTN with themselves. At first it felt like the golf course was a good location, then we speedily decided that the car park might be better - 'fore!'. Needless to say the pics are astonishing....ly like a bundle of drunk people lying in a car park.

We were probably asked to leave at this stage and made a hasty exit to the airport.

The healthy and hearty arrived on foot, invigorated by their stomp cross-country to the airport.

The lame, lazy and wined descended into the terminal by taxi - relieved to have managed to bring all the walkers gear with them, without having inadvertently stolen any of the Brighton' men's (now cable tied) kit.

This was clearly no time to be off your guard......Operation Cable Tie was sweeping the camp!

No item was safe. No player uncabled. The red stick bag cabled to airport 'queuing tape' as we waited to sensibly check in our luggage and show our passports, upped the ante! Bags were  cable tied shut, coat zips tightened, pencils cabled to hoodies - when would the fun stop? Girls -  this game should be patented!

Guilt ridden mothers scoured the shops for gifts for the children they had left behind back in the 'real world', Lego and chocolates seemed to suffice.

Larissa and Coops fell foul of the ultimate cable tie - forcing them to board the plane three legged - did they really let you on?

Sighs of relief were audible from those passengers we had not been seated near, as we 'quietly' boarded the plane! Our party headed for the rear of the plane and Coops began to get tetchy - much bag searching was observed as it dawned on her that she had left her purse on the table at the airport. After seeing her squirm for just too long to be comfortable family viewing - the purse was reunited with its owner, having been rescued by the team.  Coops was to get her own back on Maria a bit later for delaying their reunion!

A swift flight, yet more photos, this time with flight crew too, chocolate biscuits and much humour and then back to terra-firma. It was far quicker than driving back from a London fixture; perhaps we join the Jersey league next year?

Emma took a spin on the baggage reclaim, as the girls mused about their return to their real lives. Not to waste a minute of fun on their 24 hours of freedom, more mischief was yet to come, as we still had our mini bus trip back up the M3 on Ruth's Fun Bus and Jill's 'Quiz' Car. Thank you drivers!

The bus journey home is a bit of a blur, the cocktail pouch may have re-emerged, white wine kept miraculously appearing from Annie's direction. There was a lot of 'love you mate' going on and a lot of dodgy music (Galli). I'm sure we sang to Ruth again. And then again. Oh, and Willers' passport made a few cameo appearances in notable places.

So in summary…

Jilly bean - drank too much and is a closet ‘quizzer’!

Coops - did not drink enough and lost her purse at the airport and got attached to Lars.

Emma - has a thing for airport conveyer belts and does not need a stick to play hockey with!

Gallibird - bailed out of the bedroom party and got emotional! She’s getting old!

AJ - ring leader of the ‘Mischief Makers’, cheats and has an affection for cable ties and a late night bedroom party goer!

Rita - a Legend! Player of the match and 2nd half of the ‘Mischief Makers’!

Pikey – General of the Group - would make a good ‘tour operator’ and has the patience of a Saint! We love her!

Kestell - or Ruth as she likes to be known, IS categorically 35 and IS a classic!

P - how on earth does she manage to play so well up front? Shouldn't be allowed...

Miche - needs to come back to the club and play hockey again! She still has it and we need it!

Larissa - has a thing about attachment and will only visit the loo in a pair!

Sinead – screech!??!!!!!!!! Eeek!!! Screech!!!! Squeek?!!

Annie - a true ‘Teacher’ - very bossy but in the nicest possible way! However she has a problem with her little pinky finger in her drinking hand, it seems to be stuck in the upright position?!

Mai Po – De Manager and Cable Tie Ring Leader and is clearly short sighted?! (Reference to the long stick thing which takes photos!)

Mei – the mother of the group! She has an amazing hand bag which has just about everything you might need in it, including cable ties and a never ending supply of sweet things!

Sophie - constantly reminded us all and herself that she is the youngest member of the Classics and she suffered a wet bottom for her trouble!

Willers - caught up in a paparazzi moment with the horn and Craig Charles at the airport and was later caught with her pants down!

In conclusion this bunch of 17 Classics should never be allowed off the mainland again, they are not safe to be around!