Both Aberystwyth Men’s and Ladies’ teams made the journey down to Southampton
for some more U-Polo matches.

With a full bench against their 9, the seconds were confident of a good game,
and to be fair, a good (and slightly dirty) game they got.

With the hand mark of Hereema slapped red onto my back, and my hand marks on
Malcolm and Fresher Alex (lots of pre-game touching in the men’s (2nd’s) team),
the match began.

The first quarter was by far our worst. Slow out of the starting blocks and
crumbling against their quick plays and decent finishes, we conceded 5 goals.
The score was however not a completely fair reflection of our play, which was,
for the most part, decent and controlled. At the break, we saw they were
already knackered, and with a full team of substitutes, we set out to simple
wear them out.

The second quarter brought some better play, and a change of momentum; once we
knew we could score, we were hungry for more, and 4 goals went in to the enemy
net… notably a stunner from Rambo. Unfortunately, ‘Aber’ equalled us to make
it 9-4.

The third was our first positive quarter, great defence and pressure saw only
one goal slip through, to our two from Mitch and Alish (first of the season I
think).

With only 4 goals difference at the end of the 3rd, the question was could we
make it? We gave it our absolute best, with Robin putting away a hatrick, and
Malcolm and Mitch bringing it up to the required 5 goals to take the victory,
Aber were quickly crumbling as they began to loose what they thought was a
solid lead. But what was happening in defence? Despite our ‘Forest of Hands’
tactic, a couple of long range shots slipped by our otherwise outstanding
keeper. But more interestingly, a certain team member’s head came into
suspiciously viscous contact with an enemy skull resulting in a man down for 4
minutes. The team defended so well against this, and should be well praised, we
were so nearly there… and then the twat of a captain got wrapped, and jumped
back in again. Oh dear, a day to forget, but an attitude to remember! Final
score: 11 – 12.

Goals:

3 – Robin
2 – Paul
2 – Mitchelle
1 – Alish
1 – Malcolm
1 – Rambo
1 – Horlock

Majors: (Gone big)

3 – Horlock
3 – Drew
2 – Paul
2 – Malcolm
1 – Fresher Alex
1 – Piers