Match Reports For Saturday 14th February Season 2003 - 2004

Mens 1st XI

Staines made the long trip down to Bournemouth intent on gaining revenge for an almighty thumping in the first game near the beginning of the season. With skipper Stuart Hall still out through injury and Adam Hart and Geraint Hughes both returning after short spells out, it was a confident Staines side who took to the field.

This confidence was soon tested as Bournemouth started very strongly, pinning Staines into their own half for long periods. The home side had a number of early chances but some good goalkeeping by Neil Hallsworth and some poor finishing meant that Staines held out the early onslaught. Staines struggled to get the ball out of their own half and kept the pressure on themselves by being unable to retain possesion at vital moments. It was no surprise when Bournemouth eventually took the lead when some slack marking in the circle left a Bournemouth forward free and he slotted home past Hallsworth. Staines continued to struggle to get to grips with the movement of the Bournemouth side and the lack of communication between the blues was severely lacking leaving gaping holes between the defence, midfield and forwards. The only real bright spot for Staines, in the first half, was a snap shot from Matt Truman after a great ball by Tim Griggs opened up the home defence. But this was well saved by the Bournemouth 'keeper. At half time, and only being one down, Staines realised that they were still in with a chance in the game and they came out in the second half determined that Bournemouth would not go above them in the table.

Looking to start the second half strongly Staines pushed forward for the equaliser. However, with Staines beginning to apply some pressure to the Bournemouth defence, the home team broke quickly and scored again, despite the valiant efforts of Hallsworth in goal and Geraint Hughes defending on the line. Disappointed to go further behind Staines began to wrestle control of the game with stand in skipper James Chapman driving the team forward. It was Adam Hart who reduced Bournemouth's lead with his second goal in as many weeks. Again he appeared in front of the goalie to deftly turn the ball into the back of the net. With Bournemouth rocking from giving away the goal, Staines pushed forward in search of the equaliser. After good work down the left by Neil Toulson a penalty corner was won and John Stannard smashed it home through the 'keeper. At 2-2 Staines realised they could win the game and carried on probing for the winner, but some sterling defending by the home side kept Staines at bay. Then with about ten minutes to go Bournemouth introduced a substitute, who with practically his first touch, opened up the Staines defence before lobbing the ball into the back of the net for what Bournemouth thought would be the winner.

Staines did not give up and poured forward to get an equaliser and with about five minutes to go won a penalty corner which was cutely deflected in by Matt Truman at the far post. At 3-3 and with only a few minutes left the crowd thought that was it, but not Staines. Again, they pressed forward looking for the winner and after some great play by James Hall, who drew the goalie out of his goal, Chapman's shot was deflected in by Matt Truman. The last couple of minutes were played out with Bournemouth striving to equalise and Staines dominating possesion and killing the game off.

On the final whistle Staines were pleased with their second half performance and that they won against a side who had beaten them convincingly in the first half of the season.

This Saturday sees Staines taking on Gore Court at home.

Mens 2nd XI

Mens 3rd XI

Staines' third eleven were away this week. As usual that meant a trip to the south coast, on this occasion to the seafaring city of Portsmouth. Alpesh was back looking refreshed from his tropical holiday but still late. Also back were Sohail, Dan and Kingsley. We arrived just in time for our revised 1330 start time as advised by the CoP fixture secretary earlier in the week, only to find that as far as our opposition were concerned we were still on at 1430 on the water based astro. The CoP Skipper kindly promised to give his fixture secretary a kicking on our behalf. Racer Rodders was still not happy, as he was on a promise that evening and was likely to lose some valuable leg-over time, as he had already taken his viagra tablet in anticipation he was somewhat committed.

A big cheer arose, shaking the seagulls out of the rigging as Mr Safety won the toss for the first time since September. The blue army unaccustomed to water sports launched our ships onto the pitch. A rough and ready collection of old Tankers, rusty Cruisers and a couple of Frigates. Royston entered the spirit of the occasion by donning a pirate head scarf under his bone-dome. To the cry of 'prepare to repel borders' the game started. Early advantage went to Staines as we made some good charges forward at full steam, before CoP sorted out their sailing order and started getting within cannon shot of our D. A couple of early short corners to CoP, although well defended, gave the pink fleet more confidence whilst at the same time the blue fleet increasingly found themselves churning around in our own half. More aggressive flanking attacks by the pink fleets newer missile destroyers resulted in several broadsides at our goal and a rash of short corners, as the our ships moggy Chewy Patel, Brendan, KK and Mr Safety set about the invaders with belaying pins and cutlasses. Inevitably CoP scored with a cannon shot below the waterline in the corner. Shortly after they followed it up with a vicious flick to the Staines goal super structure to give the pink fleet a 2-0 cushion. "There seems to be something wrong with our bloody ships!" said Admiral Mr Safety. For most of the half Staines struggled to stem the pink tide with just the occasional counter attack. At least steaming around in circles making lots of smoke seemed to stop CoP scoring any more. Lazlo got his lip out with the umpire, what a surprise, but fortunately rolled it back in again before incurring any damage. Finally as the half drew to a close the blue fleet showed some promise as both Pathfinder Quinlan and Taxi Lazlo were instrumental in a couple of good attacking moves. Rod was still a bit grumpy - said he was feeling a little stiff.

For the second half the blue fleet was going to have to play at all engines full ahead and tidy up our passing and speed up our delivery and tighten up our marking. A better start for the blue fleet saw Sohail start to make some impressive moves sweeping in from the right, Mik cruised about always looking dangerous and the oily old tanker Lazlo kept swamping the oppositions boats with the wake from his enormous stern. It seemed a long time coming but after breaking down a pink counter attack, Alpo swept an inch perfect pass up the field to Pathfinder Quinlan, bypassing the midfield. Mik set off on a charge, thrashed his way past two defenders, evaded the clumsy attentions of a third and slotted the ball past the collapsing keeper to score. The pinks rallied but their flurry of attacks were beaten back as Roy and the defensive bastions fended off shot, shell and pike. Staines were soon again steaming around the oppositions seas with increased expectation of sinking another CoP vessel. The much improved application form the blue fleet as a whole now reaped its reward as Taxi Lazlo latched onto a through ball at the edge of the D. He turned, again the stern wash was too much for the spluttering defender to cope with, allowing Phil the space to swab out his cannon, load, aim and fire. A well taken goal brought the game to 2-2. CoP fought back and for a short time assaulted our goal with everything they had, but they were running low on ammo and were chucking everything that came to hand. Mr Safety shepherded a fizzing mortar away from the line. Roy caught hold of a kitchen sink, then fended an old chair over the bar. Kingsley threw himself on top of a grenade, and then Brendan stopped one very close to his love spuds which dropped him on the deck faster than a dockyard strumpet. However after soaking up this onslaught the blue fleet sailed onwards and increasingly looked the most likely to score as with only minutes remaining several well engineered attacks pressed the pinks on to a lee shore. Again it was Mik who instrumented a move which opened up the CoP defence, with Tanker Lazlo drawing the keeper and then delivering an excellent cross to the back post where Sohail was dribbling in anticipation of the arrival of the ball on a silver platter. He was denied by the back stick of a desperate CoP defender - p-flick awarded. Bouncy Jim stepped up, whistle blew, ball goes into net. Goal ! But wait, the keeper is having a tantrum, has not comprehended the new rules. Umpires discuss and in an act of great sportsmanship the p-flick is to be taken again. Big pressure on Jim - he flicks - he scores, 3-2 and only 4 minutes left ! The last minutes were defended comfortably to give the Staines pirates a deserved? pillaged? victory.

Hero: Brendan, Mik and Roy were the main candidates, with Roy just edging out Mik. A number of excellent reaction saves throughout the game gave the team the foundation on which to plot victory.

Dick of the Day: Mentions for Grumpy Rod, CoP fixture secretary, Rusty Tug Dan. Also mentioned was Bouncy Jim for eating all the pies that are meant for Roy. Roy needs all the pies he can get as he has to bulk up to become the typical build for a Staines lard-arse keeper. However, despite having a good playing game, too many people remembered motor mouth in the first half - unlucky Lippy Lazlo.

Mens 4th XI

A new plan was formed this week, a brilliant and clever plan. A masterful piece of cranial engineering, a most cunning plan that had evolved from the water, come on land, climbed a tree, come back down from the tree, walked about on it's hind legs a bit and then got a job in McDonalds and earned itself 3 stars and 50 quid a week. You see, it has been noted that we currently lie 3rd in our league, with Henley a couple of points ahead of us and Banbury another 7 or so ahead of them and this week, we were playing Banbury, a team who had only lost once and drawn once and spanked everyone else with shocking 10 - 0 wins and suchlike. Mind you, Henley have been walloping the oppo's as well, so it looked like we had our work cut out if our plan was to succeed.

Our plan was simple, we win all remaining games. That's it. That means when we beat Henley, who of course will win all their remaining games, they will slip underneath us in the league and become bitter, grumpy people that you sometimes see on buses. To start as we mean to go on, we had to beat Banbury. And we came bloody close.

With the first whistle, we took the game straight to Banbury. Reputations and the memory of our last meeting, in which Banbury nailed us to a cross with a 5-2 win were put aside as we absorbed whatever pressure they could thrust in our D and then tore them apart in a with a quick break which saw Leaner drift in towards their D, The Tart peeled off to the left, taking a defender with him and Jezza pulled off to the right as Mark released the ball which Jez picked up and fired at the goal for a very nicely worked one-nil lead. All this after only 5 minutes on the park. A great start was made better after another 5 minutes when the heavyweight hairdresser*, Mr Hudson broke down the right all the way to the back line and shot the ball across. The Tart was nicely placed at the front post and as such, blocked the nice view the Goalie had of Staines and most of Surrey, which meant that the ball shot past him and onto the waiting stick of our Chubby hero for his second goal. Celebrations were kept to a reasonable level as both his parents had come to watch him play.

So there we were, 2 nil up against the league leaders with only 10 minutes gone. Surely it's all gravy from here on in? Ah, well not quite. A Banbury attack was rewarded when one of their forwards run through most of our team before passing to the unmarked forward in our D, who slotted it home underneath my falling frame. This didn't dampen our spirits though as we kept them at bay really well, even pushing into their D a couple of times. The Tart was in form as he managed a one on one with their keeper and as he went round him, he drilled the ball towards the bottom corner of the goal, only for a Banbury defender to clear off the line. A couple of minutes later, an almost identical move resulted in the same Banbury player cacking himself on the line as our very own Monkey boy leaned back and got a bit of air on this shot. Nobody was going to stop it this time as it flew into the net. 3-1.

Short corners were a little one sided this week as Banbury collecting around 15 of them and didn't share any with the Staines boys. They did make one count towards the end of the first half with a shot that slipped under my legs and into the corner. The same corner where I had left Sid, who was contemplating Fatherhood and as such had wandered off muttering something about the fact that he didn't think he would be able to breast feed, what with his busy lifestyle. Arse. The gap was closing, but as we went into half time, our heads were still high.

The re-start saw it go slightly wrong for us as our lead was snuffed out most cruelly with a break down the Banbury right wing, which saw their winger run our defence amok as all I could do was collapse into the goal most ungracefully as the ball slowly rolled up my arm and in. Deano collected a green for discussing the umpires weaknesses with them and Jezza got one too, but we are not sure why. Perhaps it was for his unspectacular falling over techniques of late. Who knows, but by this stage the Blues were starting to tire, ball kicking and sloppy marking being the tell tale signs. This was coupled with some very clumsy play and stick tackles from both sides, which earned a ticking off for both Captains and the warning of "Any more and it will be Yellow Cards". Things were starting to look desperate. My voice, which had started off in it's usual, sexy, Barry White-esque manor was starting to climb octaves as I tried to verbally flog some of our deader horses, but still Banbury pushed and pushed, with short after short finding the same corner as their 2nd goal, only this time, we had tied Sid's shoelaces together, so he had no option but to stand where we left him and deflect the ball from the line to save the day. One that he couldn't have stopped though was their lead taking goal, which was created from yet another short corner, a P spot scramble which saw the ball deflected high into our net.

They were not going to get away with this. They come all the way to Staines and then have the audacity to try to beat us, in front of our birds? Never! Everyone dug deep and found something extra. I found a half eaten Twix, so I was happy. Our Quest was helped greatly by a one player advantage as one of the Banbury players found himself on the wrong side of the law and had to sit behind the goal as punishment. Finally we were rewarded as a 16 yard hit taken quickly by Sid, flew up pretty much the full length of the pitch to find Mart the Tart who, Gazelle-like went one on one with the Banbury Keeper. Monkey darted across the top of the D, and the keeper scuttled out and made his move on our Simian hero. A move which wasn't strictly following the H.A.'s guidelines as to what a keeper can and can't do. The result of a cheeky back-of-the-stick at the top D resulted in the Goalie getting his marching orders on a yellow and a P Flick for Staines.

Now, as you all know, teams at our level don't carry fully kitted up spare goalkeepers, so a quick change was made and whilst we all huddled together and decided what sort of Champagne to order in the club house to celebrate our win, or at least draw. Chubby Jezza, who was now on a potential hat-trick, decided that he would step up and show us how it's done. I mean, 4-3 down to the league leaders, with 5 minutes to go, our hopes of promotion, a possible hat-trick and all with his Ma and Pa and the Men's 2nd Eleven watching, no pressure then...... 10 minutes later and Jeremy stepped up to the Penalty spot, sweat pouring from every pore and his ring piece going like the shutter on Deano's camera at the Boat Show.

Striker ready?....................................Keeper ready?....................... PHEEEEP!

GOAL!

Nice work fellah.

5 minutes left and the game got scrappy, their previous sinner was allowed back on, which made up their numbers to 10, only to be reduced to 9 again a minute or so later when a Banbury midfielder tangled with our Antipodean version of George Michael (in his Wham! days), which resulted in them both going off. So 10 vs 9, but we couldn't make it tell. We had some chances and a possible flick as the Tart was clattered from behind in the D by Banbury's new Goalie, but no. More late chances for Banbury saw my voice reach it's highest point. Issuing rollickings at such a high pitch attracted a passing by Aled Jones who openly wept tears of nostalgia whilst that bloke out of "The Darkness" took notes. Nothing more was to come of this game, our promotion chances set back a little, but not ruled out completely, the game ending in a 4 all draw. Bloody good considering that we are not much more than an aged collection of knackerbags that happen to play hockey quite well together.

A quality performance, especially first half from all and some really good defensive short corner work from Sid, Colin Alex and Dean. A quieter day in midfield as Leaner never really found his form and too much sex sidelined Gloria till the second half, when he started to get his act together more as the blood returned to his arms and legs. The front line worked well as most of the attacking chances we had, we made tell. Frightening stuff!

The voting for Man of the Match went the way of Mummy's little 3 goal scoring soldier

The voting for Dick of the day was claimed by our intrepid traveller, for taking the Hat and Bowtie on holiday with him, presumably to divert attention away from his hair.

PS. Alex, no more pre-match Jack Daniels for you as it makes you kick the ball even more than usual.........

* Now Rich, what on earth have you done to your barnet? I know that New Zealand is a tad behind the times, fashion-wise but Highlights are for 1980's pop stars. Vidal Sassoon? More like Vidal Baboon.

Mens 5th XI

Mens 6th XI

At the start of the season you look at the fixture card and pick out the matches that look hardest on paper. Then you get the push back times and think again. And what did we get this year ... Bicester away at 4pm on Valentine's Day and in half-term. Might not affect every team but with four of our colts unavailable with some sort of pathetic excuses like " going to the US on holiday with my parents", "going skiing with the school" we were a bit short. Add Matty and Nick unavailable because its the 14th Feb - I ask you what's wrong with the other 365 days of the year - come on there is even an extra day this year ! Ben was "out of the area" and John and Petchy were still injured.

So looking a bit short, so Andy out of goal and onto the pitch, his younger brother into goal for his first game of the season. Also, Tim had to play his first full game after a couple of runouts as a rotating sub. Still, with no umpire appointed to us again and nobody offering to help us out we ended up with effectively only 9 players. After a few moments of hesitation a barrel was found behind the bar, and a couple of scrapes later Martin the Barman was unearthed as an emergency 10th player come rotating umpire.

We arrived, exchanged pleasantries and got stuck into what was obviously going to be a very tough afternoon. The early pressure came from the little green men from Bicester, their beady little eyes glowing red as they saw sight of our goal, or maybe it was just the reflection of Matt's very bright pink shirt ! In any case whatever it was their radars were not tuned in properly and all their initial attempts went wide.

After weathering an early storm Tim and his pop (Gerald) started to get a bit of freedom in midfield, mainly due to the incredibly slow speed that Bicester got into position when we had a 16 hit - and they had an extra player. Encouraged, Jack (late night party animal) rampaged forward from the left, Martin ventured out of his own half to support, and slowly we started to get a bit of play of our own. Matt was getting quite a bit of space at right half, but being a man down was making it hard to get the ball into their D with a clear sight of goal.

The ploy of leaving the back 3 intact, and then putting 4 in midfield and only 2 up front was working quite well. For several periods it was last ditch tackle time from Andy, Bob and Jack at the back, and as the pressure grew Martin effectively dropped out of midfield into a centre back role to pick off hits into the circle. Gordon came on after his umpiring stint and a few minutes later was desperately unlucky not to open the scoring. A fantastic period of midfield tackling won us possession in the midfield, the ball was fed to Andy in the centre circle who creamed a beauty straight at the unmarked Gordon as he sped into the D. All it needed was a deflection and it was a goal but unfortunately the ball jumped up off a bit of gravel and over Gordon's stick.

At the other end the home side's goal hanging captain (hi Roy !) was getting frustrated by his team's inability to pass to him before we got back to cover. And those times we failed to get back Matty came to the rescue with some fine keeping on his debut.

Half-time : 0-0

What an excellent performance against an experienced team. This half is going to be hard as the work we have put in is going to catch up with us, especially as they have and extra man, and because the colts are used to being rotated off they are bound to tire.

Start of the 2nd and Martin takes over the whistle blowing. Surely enough within a couple of minutes our defence is breached and a first time shot into the bottom corner puts us 0-1 down. At this point the home side seem to have found a couple of extra subs, numbered 8 and 10 .... interesting. The captain was 617, so were these players really 607 and 609 places better than 617?

It was 609 places better than 617 who answered in the affirmative, dribbling through every challenge like a knife through butter or a very skilled player against less skilled ones. The pressure was building as he was untacklable (or so it appeared) and 617 managed to smash a shot against the inside of the post that defied the Laws of Physics and came out sideways when it should have gone straight on into the goal. Who cares still only 0-1.

At this point of the game there was only going to be one winner and several more chances went begging, and several short corners were wasted. Then Martin the Barman took over the whistling duties and the game changed again. 609 places better rampaged forward looking for the killer goal but was superbly tackled by Martin on his stick (I would say that wouldn't I). A quick flat stick reverse hit set Gordon on the rampage. Bicester committed forward trying to score were caught napping and after a couple of interchanges Gordon was just into the top of the D with a defender so close he was almost in his shorts. Simple solution, Gordon smashed a reverse flat stick strike throught the defenders legs and through the shell-shocked keepers legs, 1-1.

The sensible thing would be to shut up shop with only 10 mins to go, but sod that, we sensed blood and went after them. Gerald defying his years suddenly started bouncing around like a spring chicken, Matt found his 2nd wind, and Gordon turned his afterburners on. The home side were starting to fray. We drove into the D and after a bit of a scramble Gordon shot across the goal from a tight angle, Tim almost getting a touch on it to score his first goal, and the ball missing the back post by an inch or so.

Alas, after rampaging forwards yet again, we were caught upfield and the ball was worked to their extra man who scored to put us 1-2 behind. Then with a minute to go another ball forward found their captain in the D who cleverly lobbed the ball over Matt in goal. 1-3.

But, as we are a development side we have to lead by example and and our message is you keep playing to the very end. Gerald found some more legs and raced down the right wing and he centred to the p-spot where Martin just failed to slap it home after another run from deep.

Result : 1-3

Great performance guys you can hold your heads high. As their captain said afterwards, "I don't think I want to play against you lot next year", which is a big vote of confidence in the quality of our youngsters. Especially when you think that Dougie, Kishan, Salman, and Phil were all missing this week.

Tiger of the Day: No voting
Donkey of the Day: Bicester fixture secretary for putting us on at 4pm, and everyone at Staines who could have offered to umpire us but didn't - wait until its your turn! Note to Ed. If we play Bicester next season make it a 4:30 push back.

Injury note: Bob was in the wars again and got a wild stick on his thumb, but with no bone sticking out this time, and we inflicted another injury on a Bicester player, this time Captain Roy coming out of A&E diagnosed with a cracked rib. Sorry!

Mens Centurions

Ladies 1st XI

Staines got off to a shaky start, with both teams managing to string some awkward moments together into perhaps convertible chances, but neither capitalising. Finally Sue O'Connell scored for Staines from a storming run through the middle and in classic textbook manner, hit from the top of the D. Sarah Chandler knocked in the second shortly after to round up the half at 2-0, narrowly missing an increase to this score was Ruth Hine's aerial shot which hit the post.

In the second half, however, Staines ladies slowly began to regain their normal prowess, Kerry Attfield claiming two goals, one from a short corner hit and the second from a goalmouth scramble, catching off guard the normally solid Ashford goalkeeper. Ruth Hine rebounded back from her earlier missile attempts over the top of the posts to score. Chrissy Lind completed the six with a reverse hit deflected off a defenders stick and popping between the legs of the goalkeeper.

Ladies 2nd XI

Ladies 3rd XI

Mixture of 3rd and 4th squad. Welcome and many thanks to the 4s, Holly, Claire J, Lauren, Tania, Julie P and Deana.

The teams were fairly evenly matched game. Staines played good positional hockey with the new team working well together. We had a few good shots on goal but the goal keeper got in the way! One attempt deflected back into D area but one of the oppo fell over their own feet, but play was stopped for safety reasons and they were given the free hit. A few minutes later Windsor had possession of the ball in our penalty area, our defence was working hard to clear the area but Claire J got tangled in the mass of sticks and hit the deck. Same situation as Staines had earlier but Windsor took advantage, carried on playing and scored!

The second half was pretty even again, we moved the ball around well, using the backs and switching play. There were a couple of scoring opportunities by Deana and Tracey but the ball went wide or was saved. Half way through the 2nd half a pass from Wendy at centre back to Holly right back to Tania in midfield, great pass by Tania down the wing to Jeanette to have a shot, not sure if it was going in, but Julie P stuck her stick out and the ball went pass the keeper on her left side. Julies deflection wrong footed the keeper for Staines to equalise. Our left side work well together, Ingrid and Lauren, mother and daughter combination linking well with Linda. Abi didn't have to much to do but kept on her toes for when needed.

Most of the team rushed off after game so unable to do man of match, therefore given to Burkie for umpiring, did very well and took control!

Ladies 4th XI

We played at home against Amersham on a prime time astro slot, which made a huge difference as we had some support from the side line ( JD and a friend of Vikkie.)

Well what can I say accept "WHAT A RESULT" ... "WELL DONE GIRLIES" , we are playing very well together and most people turning up to training is making a huge impact. Early on we went 2-0 up , with a strong defence from Emma and her gang , Emma was awarded man of the match as she played extremly well through out. The opposition then pulled back 2 goals, but we didn't panic no no no... we scored again excellent!! Alas they pulled back another , then in comes super Vikkie (clinging on tightly to her stick!!!) scores 2 great goals in the second half yipeeeee !!!

End score 5 - 3.

Nearly forgot about poor Kerry! The opposition tried to score a goal using her head as a target and she fell to the ground a huge bump later and a sorry look from Amersham ( they were voted as d.o.t.d )
Goal scorers
ALI 2
ALI F 1
VIKKIE 2