Match Reports For Week 5 Saturday 5th October Season 2002 - 2003

Mens 1st XI

Spencer 4 Staines 3

Hopes for the new season were high; an extensive pre-season program of warm up games and fitness sessions had transformed Bar B Q bellies into six packs and saggy tits into perk pecs. Keith, the first X1's fashion consultant had supplied us with new snazzy jumpers and happy with our new look we headed off to central London for a 14.00 game against Spencer.

Confidence was high, the return of the prodigal son, Squeaky, had boosted team morale. Despite trouble with immigration at Heathrow airport and a lost suitcase, Squeaky, with his new militant haircut looked ready to do battle. He had an average start to the game, his first touch of the ball saw him ghost past four players, enter the D and spank the ball into the back of the net. Staines totally commanded the first half, and were unlucky to not have extended their lead further by half time. Earlier Larry had rattled the woodwork from a short corner, and Matt 'sore foot' Truman squandered an open goal, his mind was clearly elsewhere; was it a tactical decision by Spencer to position a burger van outside the gates to the astro?

The second half could not have started better for the Blues, as they quickly extended their lead from a John Stannard short corner strike. Cry's of 'concentrate for the next ten,' seemed to fall on deaf ears as Spencer replied immediately. However, it was Staines who stepped up another gear to re-establish their two-goal advantage, when Matt Truman scored from short range. At 3-1 the game should have been all but over, however a couple of yellow cards were to prove costly. Firstly, Stouka was asked to take a rest for deliberate use of his back stick, and then Mashood was sent packing for a bad tackle. The ten men of Staines started to tire, and Spencer began to look the more threatening of the two sides. The wheels began to fall off the wagon and at some stage I think we lost the chassis as well, Spencer scored three goals in the last ten minutes to take a 4-3 lead and snatch a victory from the jaws of defeat. Next weeks the 1st X1 return to the fortress Worple Road to take on Old Whitgiftians, a clean sheet and three points are a must if we are to contend for the league title this season, bring on the support!!

Mens 2nd XI

Men's 2nd XI vs High Wycombe

Result: Staines won 4-2 (Scorers: Dodwell, Beeson, Abdul & Greenway)

An excellent start to the season for the newly promoted Men's Second Eleven with a satisfactory, if not entirely convincing win over a strong High Wycombe team who finished fourth in this Division (Southern Premier Div 2) last year.

Staines completely dominated at the outset and after 15 minutes Captain Andy Oliver superbly found Jonny Dodwell in the D who cleverly deflected the ball into the roof of the net past the helpless Wycombe keeper.

Unfortunately, Staines then seemed to relax and allowed Wycombe into the game. They mounted a series of attacks one of which resulted in a penalty stroke after a goal bound ball struck Jerry Gardien on the leg. A valiant attempt by veteran keeper, Colin Reed failed to stop a well-executed flick. Minutes later, Gary Kemish was adjudged to have been too reckless in a challenge in the D and a second penalty stroke was awarded and converted.

Although slightly against the run of play, Staines attacked and Rich Beeson stole in at the far post to bring parity at 2-2 just before half time.

At the interval, Keith Hine rammed home a "Back to Basics" message in a manor far more convincing than John Major ever mustered. Things duly got better in the second half and following an excellent "advantage" by the umpire, Shane Abdul had the presence of mind to slam home from the top of the D while the Wycombe players were waiting for the whistle. Two Wycombe players then did some more waiting, this time for about 10 minutes behind the goal.

With 10 minutes to go and having weathered a flurry of short corners, Andy Oliver broke out of defence to quickly feed Liam Green who found "Sniffer" Greenway in the D who very like Dodwell in the first half, roofed a superb deflection. 4-2 to Staines - job done.

Jerry took the Man of the Match honors for very competently keeping a skillful (and rather bad tempered) High Wycombe Centre Forward completely out of the game. Meanwhile, Lee Atkinson who has previously won many awards for great finishing, this week did not excel in this department and unfortunately took the Dick of the Day Award.

Mens 3rd XI

High Wycombe 3 v Staines 3

So we gathered on the edge of the M40 at the Handy Cross Leisure Centre for our first league game of the new season. But not before Forrest had to detour home to pick up a white shirt (he should know by now to always pack a white for away games!) and caught his girlfriend doing surprising things with a household item *. Dave Hurd had an adventure, almost got to Oxford before realising he had overshot the Junction and had not seen the huge Leisure complex right on the M40 J4 !

Still all were present and correct for the team warm up and then Sgt Major Dunners delivered the pre-match brief. A few more good clichés were delivered in his Churchillian like address and then it was down to business. The game was pretty even for the first 10 minutes, the only difference being they didn't get a shot off and we did with our fast breaks resulting in a couple of early chances. Soon after we deservedly gained our first short corner of the league season. Rowley delivered, Rengger trapped, O'Brien slipped it to Porno Hudson who spanked the ball first time and inch perfect into the corner of the goal. Excellent start, which we endeavoured to build on. Two more quality short corner routines resulted in near misses for Pace and Dave Hurd. Then Mart the Tart chipped the keeper with an exquisite reverse flick only to see it hit the post. One of our new boys Chunky Jeremy got into a tangle with a Wycombe player, collapsing with considerable force on top of the poor Wycombe recipient, who responded by trying to fend off whatever was suddenly blocking out the sunlight with his foot. Thereby Chunky got a kick in the knackers and the game was halted whilst one squashed player and two squashed testicals were revived!

Half time saw a 1-0 advantage and another rousing team talk by our sweaty skipper. The second half opened with an initial Wycombe flurry but then quickly settled towards Staines having the upper hand. The newly configured defence was entirely safe, Dave Hurd leisurely strolling around sweeping up anything that Pace, Scouse or Safety couldn't kill first time. Wycombe did not like the pace of our attacks, Mikhail and Forrest were burning up the astro with good support from Chunky Jeremy. The Tart was always a major threat and hit the post again after being put through by Mr Safety and Dave Hurd. Our midfield grafted away with excellent contributions from Porno and Sponging Student in support of our central anchor - Dunners. Inevitably Staines got a second goal when a Rengger shot was deflected by the keeper into the path of Forrest, arriving in the nick of time to squirm the ball into the net from his favourite range (short).

There followed a short period of desperate Wycombe attacks to get back into the game resulting in several short corners conceded. Unfortunately they managed to bundle in the first after a good delivery, spoiling the Housewives Favourite's clean sheet. Robbie was again a stalwart with some superbly controlled kicks and good command of his area. Staines put the game beyond doubt with 10 minutes left when a fast break primarily involving Mikhail and the Tart resulted in Martin serving up a neat opportunity which Mikhail gratefully shoved into the net for 3-1. The final minutes were played out mostly in the Wycombe half, they did not appear to have the energy to trouble us further. With our shutters well and truly down, short of dynamite Wycombe were not getting in. An excellent 3-1 win which gives Dunners his first cliché for next week - "Our first win, a good platform to build on". The Blue Army 3rd Battalion continue their unbeaten league record.

Hero: Solid, unflustered defending in the best traditions of 3rd Eleven bastions - Dave Hurd.
Big Girls Blouse: For a two minute period he frightened his fellow defenders with some bizarre dribbling displays and he missed the Junction getting here - Dave Hurd.

PS * she was doing the ironing..............(perverts !)

Mens 4th XI

Mens 5th XI

5th October 2002
Thames Valley 3rd XI v Staines 5th XI

A historic day as Staines 5th XI played their first ever league fixture. As a fitting tribute every stone had been turned, and every piece of wood shaken, to find any players available. Unfortunately, unlike other years, this tactic backfired when so many players were uncovered that team selection had to be delayed until late in the week and every team had to take 13 players. In the 5th XI's case this meant that the team was made up of several 4th XI players from last season, some regular 5th XI players, a couple of colts and chuck in a debut as well. Good job we arrived early so that we could all introduce ourselves to each other and decide on our preferred positions. Tip for Sohail (our illustrious Captain) can you get some of those stickers so that we can stick them on our shirts like at a kids party where you usually would expect to get chips, donuts, and jelly and ice cream. (Another tip, when you have kids make sure you buy them chips when you go to the chippy.)

The game started and it became immediately apparent that Thames Valley had played together before as they played some neat passing moves through the midfield. Most of these came through Ed .. a rather good good player for this level of hockey we observed ... but the tenacious hounding by Sean, Martin, Chris and Sohail meant that Keith had plenty of time to block out any dangerous balls through the middle. Then when TV tried to go wide, Deepak and Brendan making their league debuts, where there to do the necessary.

After about 20 mins we suddenly realised that despite their midfield passing they hadn't acually managed to build an attack worthy of note, and so we started to push forward more. Keith has chucked away his old 3rd XI bath chair, put his pads and helmet back in the loft, and unwrapped a new Mercian wander wand. When he wasn't leaning on it for support he used the Thunderstick to hammer balls out of defence both left and right. By establishing a pattern this gave us some shape when we had the ball and soon we started passing the ball about ourselves. A few promising attacks were snuffed out by some argy bargy defending and some serious stick hacking, but with little empathy from the umpires.

Then all in a blur we won a free hit about 10 yards into the TV half. Gordon shelled the ball about a foot of the ground down the pitch, and skidded off the ground three or four times before Phil racing in from the right dinked it passed the keeper and into the bottom corner, 1-0 ... yesaggggghhhhh!
Noaggggghhhhhh - its still 0-0 - somehow it was deemed that the ball had been lifted dangerously .. only one man knows why.

Inspired by this we powered on and a slick interchange between Martin, Gordon, then Shaun, saw us break down the left wing, to Vikash who slipped the ball into Martin who dinked the ball past the keeper with the reverse stick only to see a TV defender clear it off the line under pressure from Phil and Mr Chips. Shortly after Gordon beat a couple of players and sent a reverse stick flick towards the top corner only to see the keeper bring off a really good save.

Half-Time: 0-0

The start of the second half saw Staines become a little disjointed as we struggled to cope with the clever tactical substitutions and positional changes. Despite some encouraging runs through midfield Gordon was now being double teamed by their defence and we weren't getting enough bodies into their D. Then after about 10 minutes of the 2nd half TV broke away into our half and had a shot on target which Dave saw late and could not re-adjust his feet and could only deflect the ball into the goal. Rats 0-1.

Cue the mass assualt on the home goal. Wave after wave of Staines attacks started to build the pressure and the short corners started to come. With the pitches being so dry the ball was not coming out as fast as normal allowing Ed (yes the TV player who was rather good, and fast) to close down Keith's exocet missiles. After trying this a few times Keith switched to trying to flick it over the keeper only to be thwarted by our glorious Captain No Chips getting in the way.

Time and time again we broke forward only to be thwarted by Ed again ( I suspect that some of our players have met him more times on a hockey pitch than his team-mates) but hey I hear you say why didn't you just one-two the ball round him and take him out of the game ... mmmm ... good question ... I think training this week might focus a little on passing and supporting the player on the ball.

Just to say that despite the rather disjointed teamwork we still managed to have another couple of efforts cleared off the line and we were by far the stronger team at the end of the game. So lots of positives from out first outing.

One thing we never want to hear again on the hockey pitch was the shameful incitement of his own team mates by one TV player who accused Gordon of kicking a player in the head. The fact was that the defender came in from the wrong side and was struck by the stick in the follow through.

Result : Lost 1-0

Man of the Match : "Not so little" Phil on show of hands after tie with Gordon and Sean.
Dick of the Day : "No Chips" Sohail ... for buying himself some chips and "no chips" for his team when the oppo hadn't provided teas, for blocking Keith's flick, and for late jug buying. Ah the joys of captaining a league side ... something I well remember.

Mens Centurions

Ladies 1st XI

Staines Ladies 1st XI v Chiswick

Result 5-0 - Scorers: Mel x 2; Ruth; Baldy; Alex

A recently merged Polytechnic and Chiswick ladies team found the strength in depth of Staines too much on Saturday. A strong squad performance with some crisp and accurate passing saw the Staines team notch up 4 goals by half time. Two from open play, with some neat two touch hockey from defense and midfield culminating in precise finishes from Alex Stacey and Sarah Hamilton; one from a short corner that was pushed out by Sue O'Connell with such alacrity that the Staines attack were caught still discussing their options as the ball arrived at the top of the circle. Only quick reflexes from Nicky as stopper and Mel as striker resulted in the ball ending up in the back of the net ! Mel scored her second from the penalty spot.

The second half was much of the same and only some sterling keeping from the Chiswick goalkeeper prevented a higher goal tally. A fifth goal was put away by Ruth Hine.

An impressive performance overall that will hopefully encourage the team before their tough game against Harrow next week. Ruth Hine now has some unenviable selection decisions to make.

Ladies 2nd XI

Teddington 1 - Staines 4

The season got off to a promising start for the Ladies 2nd XI on Saturday.

Newly promoted into the Middx Division 1 league, they were unsure of their opponents but were ready to prove why they were such worthy league champions last year. It wasn't long before Juliet scored the first goal after Christina (our new player from Hong Kong) who reminded us of how fantastic it was to be that fit at 17, flew down the right wing and delivered a perfect cross. Unfortunately Staines then got caught on the break and Teddington levelled the scoring. Staines determined as ever, took the lead again from a blistering strike by Caroline Barnes of a short corner. The opportunities then came thick and fast and Staines took advantage of this and scored 2 more goals, 1 from Julia Ward, who is typical style threw herself on the floor in the process of scoring and another from Juliet Porter. All in all a promising start to the season and they look forward to taking on West Hampstead 1 at home this Saturday.

Ladies 3rd XI

Staines 3's - 0 Sunbury 2's - 2

After being promoted last season, Staines knew the league games would be tough and to prepare we had some hard games for our pre-season friendlies. Staines started well, although 2 goals from Sunbury, both from short corners dashed our hopes of an early lead and our heads went down. We could not seem to recreate the short passing game we played so well the previous week after an inspiring talk from our coach Duncan Foster, after which we went on to win 8-1. The second half was far better and we played more like a team. All in all a very disappointing start to the league.

Ladies 4th XI