Ashford Scorers:
Dan Rose (3), Amit Bhamra
Saturday had a bizarre, surreal quality to it - there were various signals to this but the only one I can think of now is Amit’s exhortation in his pre-game spiel for the midfield to be ‘up and down like a horse draws’ (or similar).
With Shaggy out, Ian McAllan was drafted in and we were nervously watching out for the sniper on the grassy knoll. Prior to the game, the umpires came up to us and informed us due to the new EH rules, they would not be blowing for feet unless it was deliberate! While one of the umpires was not as strict as this, the other lad stuck to his guns so we endured an extremely frustrating first half where the ball pinballed off feet and we played merrily (or not so) on. Sometimes it did work for us as one time a free hit was shelled in, hit my foot, hit Bubbles foot and he cleared - play on!!
Bicester were a bit more composed than us first half and were passing better, they got behind us a few times but either didn’t make any use of it or Tom saved fairly comfortably. In contrast, we had one chance (apart from a couple of shorts) and scored. Baby Ell passed to Bert on the left who lashed in a cross which Rosie (now sporting what looks like the Veronica Lake look) deflected past the keeper. 1-0 at half time but we had quite a few things to sort out half time.
Second half we put aside the re-invention of the hockey rules and really stepped it up as a team - we stretched Bicester with both Elliots giving us good width and James (who played well throughout) and Rosie started to dominate. Second goal was a superb team move down the right, Big Ell made some space and slick inter-passing between him, James, Chris and Rosie set up the latter to reverse-stick home. Soon after Amit lashed in a cannonball shortie before Ryan crossed from the left. though the ball was raised it was perfectly safe, and Rosie had time to draw the keeper, walk round him and complete his first senior hat-trick - well done, Rosie!
We still had time for a bit of drama as although ‘Coach’ nearly went down, the inspirational caption, Big Amit, did go down like he’d been shot - don’t suppose the stick hooked round his ankle helped either….I’m going to resist comments like ‘earthquake’, ‘Richter scale’ and ‘the astro will never recover’ as that would be rude. Also worthy of comment was a fantastic point blank reaction save from Tom to keep our sheets clean. So three points to maintain our second position and we made a ‘break’ for the snooker club to be first in the cue for grub.
