Ashford Scorers:
Ryan Holland
With Big Amit out due to bruised ribs, Big Ell out with a cracked rib and Shaggy playing with bruised ribs, maybe it was no surprise we were rib-bish… we can’t say we were rib-bed cos it was down to us we lost. West Hampstead are not a bad team but they are not that good either and their dodgy defence gave us enough chances in both halves to have won the game comfortably..
Having started reasonably well, we set the tone by missing 2 or 3 decent chances and allowed WH into the game and we had a couple of close shaves ourselves. We did not relax and play the hockey we can and it was not that surprising when WH scored after 20 minutes. After this we had 2 1-on-1’s before putting 2 good chances wide, we just didn’t have our shooting boots on.
Half-time 1-0 down and we set about sorting ourselves out…we did play better in the second half and after 10 or so minutes scored a really good goal…Shaggy on the left went on one of his meandering going-nowhere runs and actually got somewhere!! He passed to Chrissy D on the right who drew the defender before slipping the ball through to Rhino, he lifted the ball up on the run and volleyed it past the keeper for a cracking goal. This really got us going and we had our best spell of the game - in 15 minutes we had all the pressure and should have scored at least 2 goals from the chances we had…but…. we didn’t score and I’m sure you can guess, WH got upfield, got a soft short corner, we conceded a soft goal and that was that.
Results have gone our way despite this disappointment and we are level top and playing South Bucks, one point behind us, on Saturday so a real 6-pointer and we have to learn from our mistakes in this game. Shouldn’t be too hard on ourselves as we have had a fantastic couple of months winning 6 and drawing 1 of our previous seven. We need to show a good response on Saturday and I’m sure we will….come along and watch 3pm pushback….
