Report by: A. Taylor-Rose (Men’s 2nds Captain)

Luckily for the mighty SUWPC Men’s Seconds, whilst the Men’s First were on their long tretrious 3 hour car journey up to Swansea early Sunday morning, we were probably all strolling in from a Saturday night at Switch or in bed still asleep.

Thankfully our fixture was at 8PM and we were home. Our first opponents were Basingstoke, and as it was our first game together I was oblivious on what was going to happen – especially when I couldn’t arrange enough hats with numbers on (sorry Mr Laurent for the blank hat). The biggest boys all turned up and got together and it was the first game in which I had ever played in with a FULL 13 – good achievement lads!

Much to a pleasant surprise, we starded reasonably strong in Q1, hitting hard back after Basingstokes first goal making the scoreboard 1-1 – well done Tudders – first polo goal. With the experience that Basingstoke had behind them, we ended up dropping the scores to 1-3 at the end of the first.

With the lack of match experience, the lads started to struggle. Getting pulled up for silly things like standing and not letting go to win the tactical foul resulting to the ball being turned over to the more experienced side; as well as this loosing track of our opponents this made it easier for Basingstoke to get a few more past us. Thankfully for our mighty keeper Phil – he made the scorelines in Q2 and Q3 a lot lower than they should have been.

With a much stronger final quarter, the boys stepped up, took on board the instructions from the quarter break and pushed for goals despite being 1-8 down. Eventually after enough pressure, an early goal in the quarter came from myself, followed by a penalty goal which at the time made the score 3-10. With the last 2 and a half minutes seeming to go by like a full quarter in itself, the convincing Basingstoke team managed to get another 2 pass us whilst the boys started to tire.

All-in-all, a great strong team performance from everyone and a happy Captain despite the score of 3-12. Well done boys!

Scores:

• Q1:    1-3     1-3
• Q2:    0-3     1-6
• Q3:    0-2     1-8
• Q4:    2-4     3-12

Goals:

• M. Tuddenham x 1
• A. Taylor-Rose x 2

Majors:

• G. Le Calvez x 1
• C. Laurent x 2
• M. Catrini x 1