Report Author: Howard Teng

Game: Southampton Men vs Portsmouth

Location: Portsmouth Mountbatten Centre

Score: 21-5

Date: 09/03/2023

On the day after Southampton experienced one of its snow outbursts, the boys faced off against Pompey’s Men’s team late at night. For a cold evening, the atmosphere ahead of the game was filled with energy. Following the loss to Basingstoke the week before, which included an overall poor game performance, everyone was eager to redeem themselves.

The match started at 9:03pm, giving both teams a grand total of 4 minutes to warmup, which basically meant no warmup at all. With the ball starting on Southampton’s left, there was no chance we wouldn’t have the first possession as Finn was the one swimming for it. The first quarter proved to be a flashback to the Basingstoke game for the boys, as many couldn’t get themselves a foul as they were pushed and shoved by the opposing team. It took Pompey past a minute to get their first goal, and shortly after their second. However, Finn thought to himself “this ain’t it”, and when the ball dropped to him in the pit, he made sure that we got onto the scoreboard. But the Portsmouth team probably read his mind, as they said, “this is it” and put 3 past us to end the first quarter.

The second quarter started, and it was an absolute massacre. The goals scored by Pompey came from fast breaks, which started with the boys being pressed beyond means but apparently, we should be drowning to really get that foul. Our time came again towards the end of the quarter, when Howard got a man excluded, and a beautiful set up of the man up ensued. Passing about for the full 20 seconds, and it was Nathan who passed perfectly into the near post centre for Vinny to finish the job. But we didn’t stop there, a pass to pit put Alex onto the scoresheet for the first half to end at 11 –3.

The third quarter started, and they scraped 2 goals past us. Once again, we got another man up, for which the formation 4 –2 was set up accordingly. Having his own regrets about missing 2 important goals from the half before, Dan said, ‘let me take it from here’ and finished the goalkeeper with a top right corner. But wait – there’s more! Pompey got another man excluded, and the whole team was riding on a man up high at this point. Vinny’s earlier goal was so ingrained in our minds that we literally recreated that whole scene, but this time with Til getting his name onto the scoresheet. The quarter ended 16-5.

The last quarter started big as the boys won the swim-off. But if we could’ve looked into the future, we would have realized that we weren’t able to put any past them in this quarter. It seemed like Pompey had pushed the boys to the limit, as we ended the quarter with no points from Soton. The match ended 21-5.

Nonetheless, in my own personal opinion, this is probably the best game we’ve played all season. Despite the calls we didn’t get and the physicality of the opponents, everyone in the team showed up and shouted, “we’ve put in the work” and no one can tell us otherwise. Those who weren’t watching really missed out because the man up setup was so beautiful and slick no one would have guessed we were capable of that. Pompey even told us how much we had improved since our last match against them “despite the score being worse” – bit backhanded but we’ll take it.

Man of the Match- Dan, for his outstanding display of centre plays.

Dick of the Day- Howard, for constantly going for bullseye at the keeper.

Names – Goals/Majors

Luke Bennalick – 0/0

Til Jordan – 1/0

Ed Wilkes – 0/2

Finn Thomas – 1/0

Miro Milanov – 0/1

Daniel Ammon – 1/2

Vincenzo Bancale – 1/0

Alex Wilmshurst – 1/0

Woody Cho – 0/0

James Popple – 0/0

Howard Teng – 0/1

Nathan Dimon – 0/1