Men's Otters vs Southampton 3

This was the Otters' fourth consecutive win over the 3s since the beginning of last season and it was achieved with little fuss or drama. Unfortunately the teams were reduced to 9 vs 9 on the pitch due to the men's numbers available within the Club and the Otters fielded five youngsters playing their first full League season, one of which was making his full adult debut.

We began the game well, instantly looking to be dominant and gradually putting more and more pressure on the 3s midfield. Sparky picked up his first goal of the season about midway through the first half, his work off the ball had seen the 3s defence lose track of him several times and Clarky found him on the byline left of goal in acres of space. Sparky casually carried the ball to within about a yard from the keeper and slipped it through his legs from a narrow angle.

Our second came around ten minutes later - a regular penalty corner routine saw Clarky return the ball to the injector, Mikey Redding, who carefully picked his spot to give us the comfort of a two goal lead.

Frustratingly we allowed the 3s to pull one back shortly before half time through a bit of sloppiness. A free hit awarded down our left was quickly worked into our D where a free attacker beat the otherwise invincible Owen Adams from short range.

We weren't too downhearted at half time as we had defended well in general and restricted the 3s to very few attacking opportunities, and had enjoyed the vast majority of possession and territorial control.

We started a bit slowly in the second half and the 3s began to start getting some joy down their right, putting us under a bit of pressure - but after about five minutes we started using the space around the pitch properly, moving the ball quicker and mounting successive attacks as we went closer and closer to getting our two goal cushion back. 

Alfie Latimore was making an excellent Otters debut quite soon after his 13th birthday but he showed us his skills and we began to make good progress through the left of midfield. Shortly after the midpoint of the half Jack Sweed received the ball wide left just outside the 25 and he went on a strong driving run into the 3s D before sending the ball across to Sparky on the right who crashed the ball into the net to give us the well-earned 3-1 lead that we carried through to the final whistle without incident. It's good to see Jack and Sparky beginning to put together an understanding up front, it should be very helpful this season.

At the final whistle we gave credit to Alfie for a fine debut and also to Freddie Pinson for his superb, controlled performance at right back where he seemed to hardly put a foot wrong and also showed us his creative side more than he had previously.

Next week we'll hopefully be back to 11 a side hockey so there won't be as much space for players to luxuriate in and no doubt it will be a much more attritional match, but with two League wins out of two so far we have made a decent start and we can hopefully carry on making the most of the opportunities available to us.