After struggling to get a team together, and with several last-minute drop-outs, the Men’s first team barely filled just 2 cars on their journey up to Basingstoke on Sunday. Usually giving us a good game, we knew that Basingstoke would be a tough opposition against our team of 8 players.

It’s fair to say that the first  and second quarters were terrible for SUWPC. The team seemed to be asleep in the pool, with silly mistakes and bad passes happening everywhere. And worse, with only 1 sub we were unable to switch up the team to find a better combination of players. Alex found the goal late in the first quarter for our only goal of the first half. Frustratingly, our discipline was questionable at times, with some well deserved (and others less so) majors going against Mini and Andrea. More so, when the opposition were excluded, we didn’t capitalise on the advantage, with silly shots being taken without moving the ball to distract the keeper and defence.

The third quarter was to be our best – the only quarter that we won in the game. With a well-placed shot from the captain finding the back of the net, we finally got our second goal of the game. This seemed to wake the team up, and we went on to score 3 more goals, from Offspring, BK and Mini. At the other end of the pool, Alex suffered a major and a penalty that was duly converted. The score was 12-5 at the end of the quarter.

The final quarter saw the game slip out of our reach – with only 1 goal from Costas, Basingstoke scored 4 more. The final score was a very disappointing 14-6 loss, let’s hope that the team can regroup after the Christmas break, and fight for their first victory of the season.

Goals:
2 – Owen Stephens
1 – Alex Perry
1 – Ben Kingsley-Smith
1 – Costas Rontogiannis
1 – Tom Redman

Majors:
2 – Alex Perry
2 – Owen Stephens
1 – Andrea Ricci
1 – Tom Redman