The honours of writing this report fell to the author courtesy of a DoD nomination on a previous match day, that was despite not even having been able to play said match at the time due to injury. Some may claim it may have been the circumstances of that injury, a self-inflicted warm up mishap, those vicious rumours would have to be strongly denied though.

Commencing this report with the aim to provide our club secretary with some literary excellence, the author is in fact struggling to find any of the usual colourful and but certainly never over exaggerating language to describe the team’s expected heroics – let’s say it may not have been our finest hour of hockey this Saturday. Skipping the pre-match gossip for this report due to prior umpiring duty, we started the match in the usual fashion – connect passes, keep possession and play percentage hockey (©Biffi). Whilst not everything may have been working to perfection quite yet, we should soon earn our first PC. The flick was saved by the opposition goalie; however, this first attempt of getting the gentlemen in red onto the scoresheet should soon be following by penalty corner #2. The opposition PC defence had been sussed out by then and the natural variation was a right slip this time: Injection, slip right, trap and a rocket of shot towards the far post where injector Howie was ready for the tap-in. Surely this was going to be the lead the team could take some comfort in, settle any nerves and steady its performance …… or maybe not …. a last second masterful stick reaction by the goalkeeper deflected the ball over the backline.

From that point on, the match seemed to slip out of our hands – figuratively as well as literally speaking. With the far side of the sand pitch being in the shadow, anyone playing that side would have needed to change their Astros to ice skates. With the latter not at hand, play on that side was pretty much abandoned. In any case, halftime 1-0 to Tulse Hill and fast forward to the last 10 minutes of the match by which time we were down 4-0, none of the goals the author of this report can or would actually want to remember.

To quote the beginning of this report “it may not have been our finest hour of hockey this Saturday” – once that hour was actually over, Titans seemed to remember to play the percentage hockey (©Biffi) for the remainder of the game. One of those moves found skip Jat at the top of the circle and his 150 mile/hour shot could only be stopped by a defender on the line. The resulting stroke was duly dispatched top bins by the author – the cat of a goalie got a hand to it but the flick was simply too fast. With that the gate “awakened” and multiple waves of attacking hockey rolled towards the Tulse Hill goal. At the next opportunity skipper Jat got his second assist of the day setting up Greg “The Voice” Wildisen for a great deflection at the far post. 2-4 within minutes … could they actually do it ?? Nope, unfortunately too little, too late.

Whilst the first 60 mins minutes of this match where then duly drowned in beverages from the bar, the last 10 mins though is what will spur us on for next weekend – a double header away at Epsom in the league and then Norwich in the cup on Sunday. Bring it on.

MoM: good question

Goal Scorers: Greg Wildisen, Joergen Jaehnig (PF)