The second game of the vet’s campaign started with a small rebellion, Alex insisting an hour was too long a meet time, and therefore she wasn’t late but absolutely on time for her own schedule. Others, (mainly those with young children) were keen for an even longer meet time. Captain Greenway was happy to nominate Gemma to take over the team talk, and she shared her knowledge of various stories about the oppositions drinking and hockey prowess.

With a multi-talented front line, Gemma E, last seen covering Sia’s Chandelier, and now terrorising defences across the land, it was no surprise we started moving the ball swiftly around. Lyd using the reverse sweep, her favoured cricket shot, to navigate the ball round the pitch, feeding Gemma N for a mazy run to slot home the goal within the first 15 minutes.
Macca and Alex were slightly annoyed to have to make some tackles (a 6-0 victory the day before having set a high standard) but we needed Ali at her best to make a solid save from a tricky couple of shots from Teddington, this after Roper had broken early – apparently not allowed at our age. Followed by a diving goal line clearance by Lyd to take us it to the break with our lead intact.

In to the second half (no half time oranges were provided) Roper clearly happy to spend her birthday with us then stretched the play to set up another short corner. Some of us on the half way line way have been remarking that version 17a of our corners was likely to be hero or zero, and hero it indeed was with Gemma N adding a second.
Heidi – yet another multi skilled player, in goal on Saturday, and as per all GKs I’ve ever met, when they go on pitch, they have to go upfront. Working well with Jonsey on the left hand side they combined to set up a succession of corners, where Jill was masterful at hitting feet to claim corner after corner. By this time it was a free for all with the aforementioned defenders claiming their turn to shoot. From this Roper was on hand to turn in (callously steal!) a goal from Liz.

A good victory played in the right spirit against a pleasant opposition :)

Match report by Liz Hawkins