7 of the biggest boys drove to Andover, keen to repay them for our only Hampshire league defeat of the season. We figured 7 would be enough as a certain external factors were not present. Cough an unnamed ref Cough.

Someone has obviously tipped the authorities of the inevitable demolishing as they were waiting for us on our arrival. They diverted us into a nearby car park, more of which will be revealed later.

With no subs, we set out to play intelligently, rotating players on the wings and also sharing the responsibility of breaking. The first quarter we attacked the shallow, winning the quarter 1-0 after a fine goal by Horlock. We defended extremely well, shutting down their attack, pressing the arc and stealing the ball on several occasions. 2/3rds of the way through the 1^st quarter Perry was already on his finally warning to cool down…the animal!

Our second quarter attacking deep started well with Malcolm netting our second goal. I had two goals disallowed ( a theme of the match) one for being outside 5m (when I definitely wasn’t) and the other was not hearing the whistle when my head was under water and shooting anyway. Not content on preventing me scoring, I scored what can only be described as the shittest goal of the season. A backhand that bounced, stopped then slowly dribbled over the goal-line. Im presuming the keeper didn’t deem this shot worthy of a save as he calmly watched it float into the goal. The goal was given and added to the scoreboard but the table obviously determined this ‘effort’ was not worthy of making the scoresheet!

Andover got one in return, a small boy broke after our attack fell down, I was covering him and unsurprisingly didn’t keep up. 2-1 to SUWPC.

The second half of the match was really encouraging, against the likely winners of the league, we constantly stole the ball, broke off players and dominated defence. A real credit to the 7 players and team as a whole and the progress we have made. (apart from the two goals I rightly had disallowed, although getting sent out for shooting after the whistle again I thought was a tad harsh…)

Final score 7-4, credit to Perry for leashing the beast within and keeping his cool.

Despite this, Lawrence gave a way the weakest penalty in SUWPC’s fine history. Due to a lack of legs, and a sub 90kg squat, he was unable to tread water for the entirety for the game and was blown up for holding the post. At least he saved the ensuing penalty.

After leaving the pool, we had a problem. The car park the police had so kindly diverted us to was closed with a barrier with us within. Fortunately all that gym time was not wasted with the biggest boys deadlifting/shoulder pressing the barrier out of the way for us to make our escape. Horlock, the saint he is, then got out of his car to apologise to the nearby CCTV camera.

Horlock commented afterwards “It was lucky I had such hefty lads in the car to squash down the old suspension during our escape”

With no nearby maccys, the boys hit Tesco hard for protein and ice cream.  With no obvious team photo opportunities in the future, I guess this Tesco selfy will have to do.

Goals

2 – Horlock

1 – Perry

1 – Malcolm

1 – Conal

1 – Robin

1 – BK

Majors

1 – Perry-

1 – Robin

1 – Robin

1 – BK

Man of the match: Horlcok – for great pressing and stealing the ball on several occasions.