Team Ashford’s momentum shows no sign of slowing down with this impressive 3-0 victory and performance over a decent Eastcote team to maintain 2nd position.
We had a fillip before the game with the addition of Dawson - he dawson’t think he’s fit enough yet so he didn’t start early daws. With Big Amit out for a week, a re-shuffle meant Little Amit aka Elliot came in for his first game at centre defence and with Rosie moving to left back and Ant back in goal, we had 3 of our under-16’s in defence.
We always have hard, competitive games against these boys so we were up for it from the start - the team were like rampant wildebeasts and stampeded all over a visibly shocked oppo playing our best hockey of the season. First goal came from our second shortie, up trundled Little Amit to belt the ball goalwards and although it was saved, his old boy was on hand to push home the rebound. A few minutes later, another shortie saw Adam Husband hit a shot across the keeper and ‘Reed’ used his elastic superpowers to get his stick in the way….kick on the line, penalty - our first for 2 years! - a twitch of the pelvis, 2-0 and the 2nd for the elder Smith!! Would Reed Richards score a Fantastic Four goals?!?!!!…. No…
Eastcote had to do something in the second half and they did, making several changes to their formation to try to disrupt our game - to be honest, it worked and had a shot not gone just past the post, it might have been very different. Ant also blocked out a decent chance for them and they had a couple of shorts but they didn’t get a goal back, We continued to create plenty of chances but our swift, controlled passing game had been replaced by frenetic running to counter the visitors change in tactics. The game improved as a contest though and it was only in the last 15 minutes that we started to pass the ball around and use the time we had to stretch Eastcote and reduce the pressure on the defence who played very well throughout, in particular Rosie who was my MOM.
In the last minute, Rhino received the ball in the D and tried an ambitious reverse-stick smack but only managed to loop it up in the air and, as the Eastcote defence watched it go up and come down, Shaggy ran on to push the ball in from very close range to complete the scoring.
