The pride of the club assembled. An eclectic team of players from all over the club mustered for a midday push back on the Sand Pitch under the watchful eye of captain Chris Pearce our new director of hockey making his club debut.
Also present include long serving members Chris Gerrard and Jim Mason backed up by new talent Pete Roughton in the forward line and with the added muscle of Simon Holmes in midfield and Kieran Slorach in defence.
Alastair Whatley lent his legs to the midfield and Andy Richardson our illustrious W1 head coach sured everything up as full back.
MBDA are a small club and brought a number of young players to bear and it was clear when new member Martin Christie went off with a hamstring tweak within 30 seconds that the newly named m8 were for an uphill battle.
Fortunately Luke Collier was in a feisty mood and started imposing himself with some canny stick manaeouvres and Chris Gerrard was leading hard on the left wing.
Elsewhere Chris Pearce was attempting to call a press and Andy Richardson kept carrying the ball with some splendid stick work deep into enemy territory.
Pete Roughton nearly converted some fine chances and Jon Dann in the Southgate goal saved everything that came his way.
Whatley didn’t impress umpire Sarah Richardson with his running and certainly not his hockey not helped when his urgent tracking back nearly knocked said umpire over.
Elsewhere we won a large number of corners and failed to convert any of them. By the second half our 10 men missing our 12th man Brian Woolcott who in the England o80’s game in the week scored an international goal from his right speedy wingers position but hurt his back and was left immobile in his bed nursing his cap.
The rest of the time toiled away, dominated and then lost as the boys in white put away a nice finish in last 2 minutes to seal a difficult afternoon for this team of Southgate heroes.
Simon Holmes was well deserved mom for his work-rate and his 3 touch play.
There was no DOD but if there had of been it probably would have been the leggy midfielder.