Report Author: Sam Dalton

Game: Southampton Men vs Surrey

Location: Surrey Sports Park

Score: 4-8

Date: 4/12/22

The most recent chapter of Southampton’s Bucs adventure began with an away trip to surrey. There was much discussion before the game about playing under protest due to being told the day of the match that there would only be one referee for the game yet to be played. Getting there early the lads set up camp in the upstairs Café talking tactics and two particularly ravenous SUWPC members getting more food to eat hours before the game! 

Warm-up began promptly at 7pm with the game scheduled at 7.30pm. Both sides were ready to show more than they had at the previous game. The game was underway with the first goal coming from Surrey in the first attack of the game. This awoke the SUWPC members who put on a mighty defence for the rest of the quarter with the second goal coming 5 minutes later and the quarter ending 2-0 to the home side.  

SUWPC seemed fairly relaxed going into the second quarter, although comments were being raised (by both sides) about the interesting referee decisions being made and the potential for an official protest to be made. Regardless, the second quarter got underway with a beautifully won swim-off by our resident swimmer Finn, and the game went back and forth with great defence from both sides. It was broken in the 4th minute with a gorgeous pit pass from Omar and a simple goal from Dalton. This appeared to stoke the Surrey players into attempting to get more goals, but incredible keeping from Mr Scott and solid defending all around made the surrey players frustrated and in particular, their player in hat number 2 got his 2^nd and 3^rd exclusions in the space of 3 minutes which meant that he was removed from the pool. These man-ups however resulted in no goal from SUWPC with some rather poor attempts at shots from the top of the formation. The quarter ended 2-1 to surrey. 

At this point the refereeing became a highly spoken topic, and our president and El Capitan decided to go to the table to put forward the protest form however, neither the referee nor surrey would sign which at the time left the SUWPC players bemused, confused and a little annoyed but regardless the game went on.  

The biggest boys came into the third quarter confidently (perhaps too much so) with great defensive work and Michael working his goalie magic. However, the third quarter did not play out as envisioned. The first 4 minutes were pretty good with a goal from SUWPC tying up the score at 2-2, but surrey quickly countered with an uncontested shot from 6 metres only 15 seconds later. This started the chain and Surrey continued to put away goals from the top as the SUWPC players got tired and/or overconfident in the defence. Surrey put away another 4 goals in the last 3 and a half minutes, resulting in an end-of-quarter score of 7-2.  

The final quarter saw SUWPC boys initially a little low but with pep talks from the President and captain the boys held their heads high and put in another stellar defensive performance with surrey only scoring one goal, however, the SUWPC attack couldn’t get through the home sides defence until Howard Teng (the resident southpaw) put in a beautiful one-two pass, swim and shot, gliding into the top right-hand corner before anyone realised what had happened. The final whistle blew with a score of 8-4, with the scoreline suggesting how well both sides defended for the game, minus one quarter!  

After the game, the boys got changed and cheered on the girls as they too took on Surrey. Then, the team went upstairs to grab a drink and watch the England football game before heading back in the minibus to get food at about half-time (as the place was too busy). 

Man of the Match – A tie between Michael Scott and Howard Teng. Incredible keeping from Scott across the whole game, and Teng with beautiful defensive work and a golden goal in the last quarter 

Dick of the Day – Omar Tawakol, hit the crossbar a few too many times! 

Names – Goals/Majors 

Michael Scott – 0/0 

Miroslav Milanov – 0/0 

Edward Wilkes – 0/0 

Omar Tawakol – 0/0 

Adam Draper – 0/0 

Sam Dalton – 2/0 

Daniel Ammon – 1/2 

Finn Thomas – 0/0 

Alex Wilmshurst – 0/0 

Woody Cho – 0/0  

James Popple – 0/0 

Howard Teng – 1/0 

Nathan Dimond – 0/1