On Wednesday our men’s 1st team hosted the last game of the year, a Hampshire league game against the Basingstoke team. After a semester of victories, a last win was the best ending imaginable.

In the start of the game our team was attacking the shallow end. Our lads started with confident attacking and consistent defending that led to no goals being conceded. By driving and creating spaces two goals were scored from the pit position. The score at then end of the quarter was 2-0, with our boys leading.

The second quarter held a big surprise for our supporters, as they had the chance to see the first double man down for our team, which we are hoping will never happen again. During this quarter we achieved many breaks and managed to score three goals this way. However, Basingstoke also managed to score a goal too. The score at the end of the quarter was 5-1, still the Stags were leading.

In the third quarter things slightly change. The game became significantly tougher and some mistakes led to two goals being scored. But with a goal scored from a very nice action in the pit and another being scored from the one of two man-ups we were awarded in the game; we managed to keep the goal difference to 4 goals. The scoring board at the end of the quarter was showing 7 for us and 3 for Basingstoke.

Although the last quarter had a great amount of underwater action and many breaks, it did not have many goals. Only one goal was scored by us with the quick execution of a man-up. Our players managed to return quickly and defend superbly giving no opportunity to the opposition to score. The final result was 8-3 with the Soton lads completing a comfortable win.

My personal opinion (thankfully, half of you don’t know who I am) is that as a team, the amount of majors we are penalised with and the amount of majors we win are not as they should be. Again in this game, we ended up with 10 majors and the opposition with only two (I am not sure of the opposition’s majors as I am sure the match sheet is not correct, it shows only one). In a physical game like this one, there is no way that there will be such a great difference between the team majors. We have experienced pit men that know how to win majors and we are being constantly penalised with majors for no reason.

Enough with the complaints, I would like to thank everyone that came to the training J-house (Jubilee Sports Centre) to support us once more and I am hoping that the you all enjoyed the mixed games played in the second hour. Once again I would like to thank the table (Vicky Gall) and Amy for refereeing our game. No complaints were aimed to Amy; I think this should not even be mentioned.

Scorers:
3 – Panos Logothetis
2 – Tim Walton
1 – Will Logothetis
1 – Will Divall
1 – Alex Hewitt