COWHC Men's 3s vs Leatherhead Men's 2s - 01st October 2016

Match report time! Sorry for any inaccuracies, this will be induced by rose tinted glasses and a very poor memory.

With the new season starting for the freshly promoted Croydon and Old Whitgiftian's Men's 3s hockey team we have arrived at our home pitch, Corydon High School, which had been soaked through with rain all morning. This meant the pitch was lightning fast but also slippy. Perfect.

However, if you had seen the M3s team last season, you would be hard pressed to recognise the team standing in blue. With 11 of the 16 being new players to the club thanks to the excellent drive and boosted by the England Ladies GOLD MEDAL! Welcome guys and what a fantastic position to be in as a Captain!

With the pregame talk focusing on team work, marking and communication, the match started out fast, structured and disciplined on behalf on COWs M3. Steve McKeow and Ben Burke were an ever present force all over the pitch and being instrumental in a number of our attacking and defensive plays. The teams relentless work rate and pressing was deservedly rewarded with just over 20 minutes played as Steve McKeown being critical in a passing and running play that started from our 25 and ended when Steve managed to get the shot off putting it passed the excellent Leatherhead keeper. With the season goal cheery being popped it seemed that Leatherhead just couldn't hold back the tide of pressure any longer and what followed was some of the best hockey play that COW's M3's have seen with both James Mulley and Pardeep Chartwal scoring one a piece. Both are new to the club this season. What a way to stake a claim in the team

Halftime team talk was on maintaining our discipline, communication and passing. We did this for the first 5 minutes before Leatherhead, refreshed and revitalised, started to win the ball from us and making their passes effective to stretch the defense. However they found the rotating defensive line of Andy Hooper, John Wojtczak, Guy Pengelly Steve Brooks and Dave Harvey all showing their mettle to minimise the shots at goal to only a handful of half chances. Not getting any result from their efforts and COWs reasserting their dominance meant that COWs took total control of the game and allowed numerous shots at goal with Adam Cady scoring two goals from the back post to send COWs 5-0 up. What happened next is something everyone on the sideline are still trying to understand, Leatherhead carried out a great counter attack after a mis-controlled interception and thier player hitting the ball into COWs area to then deflect from one of our defenders sticks into the back of the goal. What was worrying was the decision to give the goal to make the game 5-1. What speaks volumes of the team this week was our professionalism and accepting this crazy decision and instantly going back at the Oppo resulting in a third goal for our debutante Adam Cady to take the game to 6-1. With the game all wrapped up there was still time for one more magic moment. Leatherhead having pushed heavily down the right side of the pitch managed to get a rebounded lift over our keeper, George Bunn, and looked like a sure goal into the top right corner. Despite this excellent effort, Guy Pengelly showed calm composure as he nonchalantly picked the ball from the corner and calmly smashed it out of play half way down the pitch despite being surrounded by opposition.

As the final whistle blew Croydon and Old Whitgiftian's Men's 3s were deservedly leaving the pitch in high spirits and smiles as we all knew that an outstanding team performance had been put in and deservedly came away the runaway winners with a 6-1 win. This team performance was reflected in spread of the Player of the Match (PoM) votes in which Davin Mahi, Keith Hunter, David Harvey, and Steve McKeown all getting votes. But, it was our two youngest players, Ben Burke and Adam Cady who were in the running for PoM with 9 votes between them. Notwithstanding a debut hat trick, Adam Cady was runner up with 4 votes while Ben Burke managed to take PoM with 5 for an outstanding game that meant he was involved in just about every goal we scored while marking out the main opposition play maker.