Men's Otters vs Romsey 3

Otters 0 - 5 Romsey 3 (A)

After we had helped out the rest of the club by filling gaps in other teams, we were left with only one player who had scored any goals this season, and that was centre back Mikey Redding who has scored all of his goals from short corners. We also had a few who were coming back after short breaks and Craig Harris joined us for his first Otters hockey of the season. Craig moved into sweeper but as we took a bit of time to get used to the new defensive partnerships, Romsey were fast out of the traps and scored twice within the first ten minutes. Both were very well taken goals following attacks down our left with strong passes to free men in our D.

Our forward line of George Butt, Nathan Henderson, Sebi Pizzo (all 13 years old) and James Carstairs made intelligent runs and found space well but once having received the ball ran into brick walls as Romsey's sturdy defenders made short shrift of dispossessing them and then quickly moving the ball upfield. Craig found himself the wrong side of the ball on a few occasions and it was great to see him sprinting back into position like a young gazelle to help out the defence. It became one way traffic for a significant amount of the half as wave after wave of Romsey attacks were held off by our youthful defence.

Harvey Gault displayed a Stakhanovite work ethic as he repeatedly turned over possession in midfield, but when he moved the ball forward it nearly always came straight back again with interest. Inevitably, Romsey got a third goal with about ten minutes left in the half after which we fought hard and positively to keep our heads above water, and with about five minutes to go we won our only penalty corner of the match with Harvey getting off a powerful strike that forced the keeper into a save, the only time we really made him work.

At half time we switched things around, shifting Henry Sheath into sweeper and moving Craig into the forward line which gave us a little bit more traction in Romsey's 25 and enabled the team to function in a more productive manner. Craig became the target for some of Romsey's more heavy-handed tackling and he was floored on more than one occasion, resulting in a Romsey green card for one incident and another which midway through the half led to Craig sitting out the rest of the match with a strained groin. We conceded twice in the second half but felt overall that we had shown improvement. Romsey tried to slow the game down at every opportunity and repeatedly knocked the ball away after committing fouls, which went unpunished, giving them time to get bodies back behind the ball as they knew that our speed was was our only real opportunity to gain any territorial advantage with Freddy Chapman moving forward well on the right side of midfield.

When the final whistle went we couldn't, with hindsight, identify any real mistakes that we'd made in the match, perhaps a lack of tightness when Romsey's midfield got into our 25, but apart from that all players had given their utmost and played decent hockey especially Stas Czajka who had an excellent second half at left midfield and the applause went to James Carstairs for his hard work and intelligent running up front.  

Phil