BDHC v Cambs Uni 2s

BDHC 1s v Cambs Uni 2s

By far the Dragons best performance of the season. Building on the calmness and good decision making of their last outing, they now added grit and resolve to their defending and it almost led to what would have been very much a shock result.
It wasn’t the most auspicious start for the home side. A worryingly lackadaisical start saw them give the ball away pretty much from the push back and concede a penalty corner within a minute of play starting! A low drag flick was ‘handily’ saved on the line by Brewer on the right post and from there on in things started to build.
Cambs came on in waves in those opening ten minutes, but sometimes in a game when you’re under pressure, you just need something or someone to set the tone. Welcome back Phil Arnold. Calm? Mostly. Cool? Always! No nonsense tackler? Every. Single. Time. This rapidly spread throughout the team; Mountain and Saunders at left and right back respectively were immovable objects, with many a Uni forward bearing the scars afterwards from their (sometimes literal) run ins.
Portlock as ever was pulling the strings in goal and anything that got through the back 3 was mopped up easily by the puppet master.
Yet while this kind of defensive bedrock is excellent, the base needs to be used as a platform to attack, and too often this is where the Dragons have been found wanting, too drained by their defensive efforts to launch cohesive counter attacks when the opportunity presents itself. Not today. Isaac Charles, James Watkins and Richard Barden in central midfield were composed on the ball and looked to join the attack of Moisey and Brill whenever possible.
A short corner finally gave Cambs the lead, the first of 4 high quality finishes in the game, but the response was excellent from Bourne Deeping. Another well worked short corner doubled the away side’s lead, but still the Dragons stuck to their task doggedly, refusing to let the game get away from them despite being down to 10 men after a scything challenge from Charlie Riddington saw him sent to the bin for 2 minutes.
Joes Moisey and Garner then combined well down the right, Charles smashed the ball in from a tight angle and suddenly the students looked worried, uncharacteristically giving the ball away under pressure from the Dragons’ forwards. The next five minutes of home side pressure almost forced them level, but the 2-1 deficit remained as they went into half time with the game finely balanced.
At 2-1 the next goal is always crucial. Both sides attacked hard in a bid to earn it, and again it took some excellent defending and agile goalkeeping to keep out the Uni side. From front to back, the tackles were flying in, disrupting the Uni side and not allowing them to gain any momentum. Another counter attack from the Dragons led to a short corner opportunity. This time Ben Saunders smashed it. Hard. The defender on the line stood no chance and was struck on the shins; penalty flick awarded. Charles stepped up to add to his tally and level the scores, but the Cambs ‘keeper guessed right and made the save.
As tiredness set in, the Dragons were conceding territory, but that’s all they were willing to concede. Saunders saw green for putting his opposite number on his backside, but by now the team was working so hard for each other that each time a Cambs player thought he’d beaten a player, 2 more would be blocking his path. So fired up were the Dragons that there was even a case of blue on blue; Hugo Brill guilty of a bit of ‘friendly fire’ taking the ball off his own team mate at one point, such was the desperation to win the ball back.
It was only fitting that the game be decided by a moment of quality rather than a mistake, and so it was. A piece of trickery down the left allowed the Uni to finally penetrate the D and cut the ball back to a forward bravely sliding in to tap home in the mass of sticks and legs 3 yards out.
A cracking game and one of the most enjoyable defeats I’ve ever been part of (and over the last 3 years there’s been a few!!!) ?
MOTM – Phil Arnold. Led by example as always.