Ashford Scorers:
Gordon Smith, Elliot Smith
This was a bit of a Halloween horror for Big Amit’s Red-and-Black army…I came off the pitch trying to be positive but was put in my place by the Smell whose politest comment about our performance was ‘we were crap!’
But it all started so differently as Team Ashford stormed into a 2 goal lead through father and (according to Elliot) adopted son duo of Gordon ‘Reed Richards’ Smith and Elliot….The first ‘ghoul’ (geddit?) arrived when Chris Davies flicked the ball from a shortie which was saved and Reed stretched (that is quite - ok - nearly funny if you know your comics - clue - I’m not called that because I am Mr Fantastic at hockey) anyway it went in…5 minutes later skilful team play involving all the forwards notably Carl Miller set up Elliot from one yard out and the Podgemeister is deadly from that distance…high-fives around and we anticipated a ‘monster’ score…and had chances to make it 3 before GX pulled one back to put a ’scare’ into Ashford….I’ll stop now…
Amit unfortunately didn’t say the Words Of Power at half time and our second half performance was somewhat lacking and our goal started to take on a Charmed life - though our debutante 14-year-old Tom Johnston pulled off 3 or 4 great saves, he could do nothing about the deflected shot that whipped past him for their equaliser.
One thing you can say about our team, we never give up and the workrate could not be faulted - I blame the absence of our crowd, Michael Rose, who had the audacity to go on holiday across a Saturday…that’s the last time I let you drive us to Banbury!! (you’re ok for MK and Oxford though)… Midway through the half, a sniper on a grassy knoll took out Hallow’Ian McAllan…fortunately the bullet-proof vest saved him…unfortunately 5 minutes later, we discovered he did have an accomplice as Coach went down like he’d been shot again and had to go upfront…. we re-organised but had to wait until the last seconds to get our best chance to take all 3 points as we had 2 shorties but the tale of Amit’s 2 attempts is a horror story (the Amit-yville Horror story?) for another time….
