Bourne Deeping Mens 5’s v Cambs City 6‘s

Before the game the it was mentioned the last time about 4 of this team had taken the pitch as a unit was probably last millennium..! But what they now lacked in speed (well, never had much of that) they made up for with guile, and with the youth of Magnus Winsor, Harry Wakeham, James Gray, Ryan Dacre and Mac Gatward Clarke they had a good mix of the old staple, “youth and experience”. The game started fairly evenly matched, Cambs city had an older team, but BDHC urged each other not to try to go into contact or make speculative passes. There was some good passages of play where the away team were getting frustrated by the way BDHC were playing the ball around, but Cambs City were always dangerous when in possession, and the defence had to be awake to clever runs and you could see the away team had played together as a unit regularly, Paul Matthews using all his experience at times to thwart the right winger. The first goal came for BDHC from a well struck short corner which dribbled onto the foot of the unlucky defender on the line, Richard Gray putting away the flick low to the keepers right. Unsurprisingly Cambs pushed hard to get back into the game, and scored with a firm flick past the defence from a short corner slip move to the left at the top of the D. A disappointment after Oliver Wright in goal had made some good saves.

At half time the talk was to keep the confidence and accurate passing and movement going, with less speculative long balls to the forwards.

The second half was much like the first with firm challenges made by both teams, and after running down the barrel, and bravely blocking many short corners Jeremy Phipps was able to have a breather after one to many “firm” tackles. The ball was still getting to Muddy Waters upfront, but the experienced Cambs Defence were not letting him into the D, although he had a 1 on 1 with the keeper, but was unable to squeeze it into the goal. Bourne Deeping took the lead from another short corner, this time the push was a little wayward allowing Stewart Dacre to let the 2nd runner commit himself, then slip the ball to Chris Mann, who took a touch then slammed the ball into the bottom left hand corner, past the Cambs keepers outstretched left foot. As ecstatic as Bourne Deeping were, they knew that they were still going to have to fight hard, and all over the pitch they did, Magnus Winsor being a constant thorn in the Cambs side, chasing harrying and also linking well to build attacks, and earning himself a place in the England hockey team of the week.

It was commented after the game that the whole team had put man of the match performance in, and could be rightly proud of a hard fought win against an experienced side.