Week 17 – Super Saturday, for some
WH&E L1 6 : 0 London Royals W1
The ladies 1s hate late games…they mess with our heads…but apparently, they turn out to be pretty good games for us though.
We started strongly with a billion shots on goal but their keeper kept everything out.
Shell bottled a shot at the top of D; Amber did the same. Sam, Bethany and others all decided to aim for the corners of the football goal instead of the hockey goal.
But then we decided to actually score: A lovely penalty corner calmly put away, and then another soon after by Gemma! A third was scored when Amber forgot what to do and Bethany had to score for her.
3-0 HT.
In the 2nd half we sat back and kept dominating, but seemed to forget to shoot. Then a penalty stroke, and after a mini domestic between Sam and Shell on who was taking it, but it was calmly put away to make it 4-0.
Soon it was 5-0, when a great link up saw a “rugby huns” goal from open play.
And then 6-0, with the slowest goal ever from Karen Goode after some pinball bouncing of the ball around the goal.
Six goals (again), a clean sheet and a fine all round performance!
WH&E M1 3 : 4 Southgate M5
Southgate really know how to put on a show, and with news of WH&E coming to town, they decided to dedicate “Super Saturday” to trying to break the record home crowd attendance in England. They accidently had the stands facing the wrong pitch though.
Anyway, we got off to a fast start which saw Dan hit a ball into the D, which was swiftly deflected in by Colin for a 1-0 opening. This usually doesn’t happen to us, but we’d had an inspired team talk from the captain!
We were rather dominant for some time, however Southgate managed to get themselves a penalty corner, which then turned into a flurry of corners and it finally paid off as they managed to scramble a ball into the back of the net.
Soon after this, another penalty corner found the back of the net for Southgate, with a deflection over the Winchmore keeper. “Why always me?!” cried Josh!
Just before half-time, Dan wanted to be the man of the show and passed the ball into chairman Dom who decided deflecting at a 5 degree angle was a good idea… it was and it popped its way through a gap between the keeper and the post. 2-2!
In the final moment of the first half, Dan latched onto an Ollie aerial and found himself 1v1 with the keeper…only for the umpire to blow for half-time ☹.
The half-time team talk was very inspired – Dan had two assists to his name in one of his best performances for WH&E EVER, yet Jack was picking up a spare man so had all of the captain’s plaudits at half-time. [Ed – who wrote this 😂]
Into the second half, we finally managed to get a penalty corner of our own about 5/10 minutes in. Up stepped Joe T with the drag flick and the legend sent the ball into top bins for an outstanding goal – the best of the day to put us back in the lead at 3-2 up. After this, no idea when but Southgate found their hat-trick from short corners to make it 3-3, much to the dismay of Dan Steer who tried to big up his peers by allegedly saying “come on lads, we ain’t Everton”.
Ahh it wasn’t to be though, as Southgate managed to get a winner in the dying minutes of the game, from yet another penalty corner – 4-3 a seemingly harsh scoreline.
WH&E L2 0 : 2 West Hampstead W4
Us (9th, 3 wins incl. a walkover) v Them (top of the league, 1 loss, won 19-0 the week before)
“We won 2-0 but bloody hell did they make us work for it.”
WH&E M2 2 : 4 Indian Gymkhana M5
A tough game for the M2s against top of the league Indian Gym. But Winchmore made the visitors battle hard for their win, picking up two well taken goals from Harry and Theo.
