Club Day Showdown!

The showdown nobody knew they wanted finally arrived on a sweltering Club Day. After a brilliant day of training for colts, ladies and men and a fantastic Sponsors game vs the league winning Badgers team, the M2s took on the L1s in a Super Saturday showdown for the ages.

In front of an expectant crowd, the game got underway with early possession being shared between the teams, both testing each others resolve and pressing to find the opener. The ladies dominated early possession with both sides showing their competitive spirit, with the ladies throwing aerials and Izzy Davis making great runs in behind for through balls which almost caught us out through the half. The breakthrough came for the men with debutante Dan Solloway taking the ball under pressure in the D to brilliantly finish off a good pressing move. The ladies showed great skill in possession to peg back our midfield and put our back line under pressure, winning regular short corners which Maips led brilliantly. However, Patrick Wall added a second after another counter attacking move. A change in formation at half time to liven things up and try something new was a good change to see how we could shape up this season.

The second half, with the crowd becoming suitably inebriated and raucous, saw us press up higher and start putting together some lovely moves bringing more and more chances. Peter Young added a third before the ladies pegged us back scoring a well worked short corner from Katie Patterson (KP). We got some breathing room again with Alex Littleboy netting soon after, it was great to see the pressing from the lads and composure to finish, the ladies were strong in possession and continued to show their class all over the pitch. Harvey Richardson tried his best to return to M2s old ways by bursting through the defence, rounding the keeper, name in neon lights.... Bam, open goal missed. Thankfully as he immediately acknowledged this sure fire DoD moment and the goals were rounded off with JT adding a reverse stick half volley into the bottom corner drawing ooooohs from players and crowd alike. Our final goal came from Harvey after a lovely short corner move. Sadly not enough to atone for earlier but a lovely goal to cap a great day offensively from us.

The ladies played a brilliant game with great skills from Wendy Doolin to lead their attacking charge, and crunching tackles and composure at the back from Rach Mealyer (Red) and Rita Chaher in particular being roadblocks. They showed great composure through the game to force Ali Allan into saves as well as showing a great skill and distribution in defence to keep making chances, which led to them getting a record number of short corners at the end of the match and taking us down to 10 men when Gaz Lappin channelled his inner lumberjack. Which with the crowd chanting "next goal wins!", which Katie Crevel ( Kev) duly scored from, cuing wild celebrations. Please teach us some of your routines!

A brilliant day, played in great spirit and here is to a great season with Sonning!

Men's Nominations:
MoM - Harvey Richardson - immense effort, hard pressing and finally scoring
DoD - Harvey Richardson - *See above miss* - then doubling down and trying to justify it.

#COTN!