Classic weather report

Captain Pikey had promised us fine weather before we travelled to Leatherhead for the first round of the Investec Women’s Masters O35’s Cup. This meteorological prediction was on a par with Noah’s memorable ‘red sky at night, shepherd’s delight’.

Despite a combined hockey playing experience of just over 300 years, not one of the mighty classics had been subjected to this level of torrential rain before. It started just before the whistle blew, drenching both teams through to their unmentionables and leading to a delay to the start because the umpires couldn’t see (there’s an obvious joke here about this becoming a theme throughout the game).

When the game finally started it’s fair to say that Epsom hit the ground swimming - going about 3-0 up in ten minutes. Epsom won the Trophy last year after beating us in the quarter final.

Helen Dacre’s water polo credentials shone through as she helped steady the ship in midfield alongside Claire ‘twinkle toes’ Gallimore, Rear-Admiral Willers and Jilly ‘swoosh’ bean.

When the ball wasn’t submerged or in the possession of an extremely organised and skilled Epsom team, Sonning Classics did create some good play. Fran applied her usual terrier-like skills to create space down the left and spin rings around the Epsom players and herself. Shinners entertained us with a mighty backflip and AJ ghosted around the midfield and up front creating chances and confounding the Epsom defence with her 3 point turns. Coops did a windmill and nearly broke someone’s elbow.

Half time happened, no idea what the score was at that point but the second half was much improved for the Classics. Stacey battled away down the right helping to create chances in the D, Annie and Mei made countless life-saving tackles while Miche rolled back the years with some outstanding saves. Epsom did take the score to 6-0 with some fine goals - not much we could do about them to be honest and they deserved a smattering of applause.

In the final 5 minutes the gods of hockey gave us a short corner. Pikey’s corking short corner strike had us walking on sunshine for a few mins before the inevitable strike back from Epsom completed the game 7-1.

We were much better at teas - smashing the soup, bread, cheese, doughnuts, cake, tea, G&Ts and lager into the back of the net (plus a bit on the floor). Special confectionary mention to Mei and Coops (who was hoping to avoid muff next time by supplying cake this time) and it worked!!!

Well done Classics - onwards to the Trophy where we belong! This will be our 3rd year in the trophy - we reached the last 16 and quarter finals in the last 2 seasons so looking to continue our run to reach at least the semis this season.

Players: Miche, Fran, Willers
Muff: Stacey Stop-Out