Indoor Hockey. Gloucestershire County Qualifiers. 12 minutes 1 way.
Top 2 teams qualify.
On Sunday, 10 of our finest Indoor players travelled to Stroud to compete for representation at the West of England Indoor Tournament.
Running late due to some traffic issues and wandering round Wycliffe college for the best part of the warm-up trying to find the entrance, we eventually found the sports hall where we hoped our opponents were tiring themselves out.
The first match of the evening was B&W v Cheltenham which started with a quick pace. Opting to sit back and soak up the pressure. Cheltenham scored first with a nice deflection from the top D (although we thought it was outside of the line) but the umpires upheld it at 0-1. A second Cheltenham goal came after some very skilful interchange in which Cheltenham showed their class before Tom Bryant found the gap between the keeper’s legs to make the score 2-1. Cheltenham found a third and the fourth was disallowed as that one definitely was outside of the D. Game finished 1-3 to Cheltenham.
Our second match found us taking on Bristol Uni who were an unknown entity. Within 40 seconds Harry Bryant found the net by lobbing the advancing keeper. Bristol Uni played very well indeed and put our defence to the test. Wayne Manton kept us in the game with some excellent saves and our defence looked solid with Bri Edwards showing the students what real indoor hockey was like. With 1 minute to play and what we thought was a free hit awarded to us, Bristol Uni took a long corner and found a player at the top of the D who slotted it into the bottom corner. Match finished 1-1.
Our third opposition was the more familiar Wootton-under-Edge where once again we took an early lead through a penalty corner, Harry Bryant found the bottom corner 1-0. Wootton shortly after won a penalty corner of their own only to see their top left effort saved off the line by Tom Bryant. Despite some superb keeping by Darren Ashley, Wootton eventually levelled back to 1-1. Some lovely interchange saw Andy Platts drive down the right hand side, Tom Seager work the baseline and Phil Brown slot the ball into the open net. The umpire thought Phil was a slapper though and disallowed the goal. Minutes to go and a short corner won by Charlie Williams was converted by Tom Bryant to finish the game 2-1 to Bristol & West.
Finally we came up against Lansdown, and after drawing with Bristol Uni we needed goal difference to qualify. Lansdown had settled into the indoor game by now and after previously heavy losses and parked the bus quite well. An early opener took us 1-0 ahead and quickly we were 3-0 up. Lansdown rallied with some good attacking plays and took the score to 3-1. Jimmy Wilson delivered some exceptional balls D to D which culminated in some great deflections but unfortunately just missed the post. Another penalty corner conversion took Bristol & West through to 5-1 and with time running out and pressure building we left a lot of goals on the court. Nevertheless, a good game but every goal counts!
1 - Cheltenham 9 points (+3 goal difference), 2 - Bristol Uni 7 points (+6 Goal difference), 3 - Bristol & West 7 points (+3 goal difference), 4 - Wotton-under-Edge 6 points (+4 goal difference), 5 - Lansdown 0 points (-18 goal difference).
Team: Darren Ashley (GK), Wayne Manton (GK), Jimmy Wilson, Andy Platts, Bri Edwards, Phil Brown, Charlie Williams, Tom Bryant, Harry Bryant, Tom Seager.