The last game before the Easter break for the Men’s 1st team was against the Southampton City 1st team. This was the first encounter with the City team this academic year. For Robin (Men’s 2nd team goalie), this game was his opening with the first team.

The game started with our team attacking the shallow end. During this quarter people had the opportunity to use the space created from the opposition’s drop to take shots on the big goal’s corners. The stags went big, and scored 3 goals. Effective defending, with quick returns and press led to only one goal being conceded in the first quarter. The score at the end of the first quarter was therefore 3-1 for the Stags.

The second quarter found our team defending the shallow end. Many unnecessary majors were given away, creating opportunities for the City players to score a series of shots. Our team tried hard to score in the deep end, but lack of drives led to predictable attacks, which were easily defended. Only one goal was scored by us and three were conceded. The score was levelled at 4-4.

The game was proving to be as difficult as it was expected to be. The second half started with our Stags playing hard and taking more chances in the shallow end goal. This led to 4 goals being scored by our team, but 2 goals were scored in return by the City team. The score difference rose to two goals once more; the score at 6-4.

The final quarter was set to be the most crucial of the game, as both sides had managed to constantly have a two goals advantage when attacking on the shallow end. This time we had a two goal lead and were defending the shallow end. During this quarter exhaustion from both sides led to chances for breaks to be created. A minute before the end of the game both teams had scored 1 goal and so the goal difference was still 2 goals. But the City team managed to score a goal reducing the goal difference to one goal. Our Stags only needed to hold the ball for 30 seconds before the game ended, which they did. The final score was 9-8; a close, but helpful win that might determine the Hampshire league winners.

This game was record breaking in regard to the number of majors received by our side! Our team started with a full squad (13 players) and by the end of the 3rd quarter was decreased to 11 players as 2 of our guys managed to collect three majors each, thus getting wrapped. Those two big boys were Lefty (Josh Rowland) and the Tank (Nick Tankov). At the end of the game our team had a total of 17 majors (appr. one every two minutes).

Many thanks to Amy for refereeing our games once more, as well as, the girls and boys that spend their time helping run the game by running the table.

Scorers:
3 – Nick Xenakis
3 – Panos Logothetis
1 – Will Divall
1 – Josh Rowland
1 – Henry Perkins