Match Reports For Saturday 20th September Season 2003 - 2004

Mens 1st XI

Mens 2nd XI

Mens 3rd XI

Mens 4th XI

This week's match was originally due to be against Walton and Weighbridge, but unfortunately they could only manage 2 players so a re-match vs. Ashford was hastily arranged. Having played Ashford the previous week away and beaten them we suspected that we might be in for a tougher match this week. They had switched out about 5 players and our squad was slightly different also.

Ashford started strongly and Staines found themselves in a period of significant pressure, which eventually resulted in a goal for Ashford - can't remember anything about the goal. After the initial shock of going down a goal, we pulled ourselves together a bit and started a fight back. Martin Rengger scored an almost identical goal to his last week's goal, taking the ball round the flailing keeper and slotting it into the back of the net.

Shortly before half time Staines found themselves 2-1 up as Rich Hudson reverse sticked a ball towards the goal.. It kinda bobbled past a number of Ashford sticks and was just about to go in the back of the net when it was poached by Alex Sherman - "Making sure"

In the second half, Ashford came out fighting and scored an early goal almost straight from the start to equalise. We were finding it hard to keep ourselves together despite the best efforts of our cheerleaders at the back.

Ashford put a third goal away to go ahead and despite a late rally from Staines we couldn't equalise.

Man of the Match - Robbie in goal for some fine keeping to keep Ashford to 3 goals Dick of the Day - Jeremy for his impersonation of a gazelle in full flight being taken down by a Notcutts sniper hiding in the trees

Goals
Martin Rengger
Rich Hudson

Other noticeable performances
The cheerleaders at the back led by the (vocally) talented Phil Laszlo

Thanks to
Colin for Umpiring
Jeremy and his young lady friend for providing Teas

Mens 5th XI

Venue: Guildford Water-Based Astro

As usual at the start of the season its always a struggle to get all the teams out. Last week 4 teams, this week 5. As a result we set off with a bit of a scratch side, made up of several new players, a few old hands from last season's championship winning side, and with no goalie available we acquired Dan from the 4th XI to don the kit. It was very, very hot, but we all got to cool down a bit when the sprinklers were turned on before the game.

Having been refreshed we were soon under considerable pressure from the young and confident home side. Being a bit of a hotch-potch of a team we struggled to settle but managed just enough to protect our "virgin" keeper. Slowly we started to gain a foothold in midfield and made the odd foray into the home defence. Then we almost scored with a fantastic pass from Simon to the back post where Bob ghosted in unmarked but just couldn't quite get the required touch.

Then disaster struck as a hit was awarded at the top of the circle and the Guildford striker put it down quickly and laid a moving ball to the top of the circle for it to be smashed high into the top corner ... Dan where were you !!!

A few more promising attacks threatened to get us back into the game - but these were thwarted by some obscure umpiring decisions, and then with little Phil caught out of position the home side tore down the left wing and crossed into the circle. The forward did a complete fresh air shot which caused the defender to take evasive action, but alas the nothing was awarded and the striker thrashed the ball high into the net at the near post. Dan .. good job you got your head out of the way of that one!

Half-time: 0-2 down and sweating profusely we all had a long break to refill our water bottles.

The 2nd period started promisingly as we controlled the ball much better - and several counter attacks were cut short by some over officious umpiring. I mean when their forward commits a foul and you take a quick hit out to the winger you don't expect to be blown-up and asked to move the ball a yard from where the hit was taken - thus allowing all the home players to get back in front of the ball.

Then frustration led to one of these re-taken hits being intercepted and the ball moved into the circle for a snapshot into the corner 0-3. A few minutes later and Dan pulled off a fantastic triple stop as their forwards went in for the kill. Midway through the half and another sweet passing move saw the home side notch a 4th goal. During this period though we played some neat passing moves of our own and engineered several short corners. We tried some new routines and from one Martin lifted a shot from Major Jim high into the top corner only for the keeper to smash it away like a tennis player ... we waited for the flick to be awarded but nothing going.

Then 5 minutes from the end Martin (now umpiring) awarded Staines a p-flick for some deliberate back stick work in the D. Ada stepped up and put a weak flick straight at the keeper.

Man of the Match : Dan the man in goal - some fine stops and kept on trying
Dick of the Day : Ada Petch for a rather poor flick

Mens 6th XI

Mens Centurions

Ladies 1st XI

Last friendly before the league begins and we ended up trekking our way across London to Crystal Palace and the sandiest pitch in England. Once eveyone had arrived (a few traffic jams, wrong turnings - Jo Struds) we again faced a hot day of hockey. Mel Attfield scored a hat-trick, obviously all spectacular goals!, and Alex Stacey and Sarah Chandler slotted two more in. Some confusion in defence, blame it on the heat, lead to Spencer scoring 3, but we don't want to talk about that.

A mixed performance, some good bits and some bad to be discussed by Coach Shay on Wednesday, but the ladies are looking forward to meeting Ashford in the first league game next week.

Ladies 2nd XI

With a scorching start to the season Staines got off to a good start as the mid-day sun shone. The team worked well together with some excellent passing from the mid-field to the forward line. Tulse Hill gave away an early penalty flick which was an opportunity missed by Staines. However, Staines were unperturbed and 25 minutes into the first half Helen White scored our first goal. Staines to continued to dominate the first half with Juliet Porter scoring off a short corner shot off Caroline Barnes just before half time.

The second half started off fairly evenly with Staines making the most of their substitutions due to the sizzling conditions. Eryl Penny counteracted her earlier penalty flick miss by scoring with a direct hit from a short corner which put Staines in a 3-0 lead. The latter part of the second half saw some good runs on the right wing by Debbie Hampton with excellent support from Claire Woods, Ali Schomberg and Helen Fisher in the mid-field. Juliet's next goal came from a smooth pass from Lizzy at the top of the 'D', however Juliet, not satisified with the mere 2 goals went on to score the final goal in the game leaving her with a hat trick and Staines with a 5-0 lead.

Great work from all the team members, let's hope this is the start of many victories!

Ladies 3rd XI

Ladies 4th XI

Undaunted by defeat last week our four new players came back for a second go and were joined by Frances who has graduated from the Colts. The fours arrived at Windsor in a buoyant mood with fifteen players, which given the continuing good weather and warm temperatures we were only too glad to know there were subs available!

It was obvious that we were more evenly matched against Windsor than we had been against Wanderers last week, and shortly after Windsor scored their first goal, Tanya scooped one in to the Windsor goal from the right hand side of the D - one all. Windsor scored again shortly before the half time whistle putting them into the lead to start the second half.

We're not sure what happened in the second half - Windsor scored four times, although there was no noticeable difference in the standard of play from either team. They got some very good goals in which Keeper Karen could do nothing about. Staines had some chances and short corners at the other end but the final touch which Windsor seemed to have appeared to be evading us.

Final score 6-1 but we didn't feel the score line reflected the game overall and we were much happier with our performance than last week.

Player of the match - Clare Jennings
Highlight of the match - our first goal of the season - well done Tanya!