Following on from last season’s success, this club night saw the biggest number of players so far! Thanks to everyone who participated and a special mention to the goalkeepers for defending their goals and playing more matches than anyone else! After a final showdown between Robyn’s McLean Up Crew and Bhav’s Best B’haviour, Robyn’s team took the coveted golden ball. The final ranking was:

And now, a little something from our captains….

Leeave it to Us (White) – Captain Eimear Lee

The White team got off to a respectable start with a draw against the eventual winners, Robyn’s Greens. A lack of subs on the ladies’ side may be been partly to blame for the subsequent two losses to the Yellows and Reds, but it was all to play for in the last game of the evening against the Oranges who were having a similar run of matches. Dani put two cracking goals past Jason in that game and to everyone’s surprise, Jim also got a sneaky one by. I don’t think anyone knew what was happening but suddenly the ball was in the goal; we’ll take it. A good end to the first evening to finish 3-1 up. 

The second night started off well with some new arrivals to bolster the ranks, but not even Dave Monck's powerful cross-pitch clearances could rustle up a win for us against the Blue and Pink teams. Not to worry, there was some enjoyable hockey played throughout. Time for some Haribo before the 5th/6th playoff. Colin's Oranges were looking a little less tired than the last time we played them, but there was not much sign of the orange #ADL t-shirts sadly; how quickly the fashion world moves. A very entertaining game followed with a disallowed goal for the Whites (there may or may not have been a back stick, eagle-eyes Rosselli) and a nice goal from the Oranges meant that it finished 1-0 to them.

Aerial Assault (Orange) – Captain Colin Troll

No need to talk about what happened on the Tuesday night. I think we got a goal at some point, but we found ourselves rock bottom of the league table going into match night 2 with the 1st  and 2nd  place still to play. Perhaps that’s exactly where we wanted to be in order to give everyone else a false sense of security? It worked a treat as we beat ‘B’have Bhav’s’ top of the table team 1-0 in our first match and then drew against ‘The Old Kernels Rabble’ after that. 

All that improvement/achievement only meant we still finished 6th , which set up an epic clash against the ‘Leeave the disallowed back-stick goals to us, as this Orange team clearly are the best team here tonight, how on earth have we drawn these guys in our last game?’ team. We beat them 1-0 (having scored a very nice and very legitimate goal) to ensure we didn’t get the wooden spoon, which I didn’t actually see on the night but I assume that this is now in Eimear’s possession. Perhaps she can try stirring stuff with the back side of that spoon and see that that also does not work either! 

[Editor’s note: the coveted (and non-existent) wooden spoon would have gone to the 7th place team, so I’m not sure how either team in the 5th/6th place playoff would have won it!] 

Here’s my team celebrating a great Thursday night of hockey, and forgetting what happened on the Tuesday evening two days before:

Kernel Mustard with a Hockey Stick (Yellow) – Captain Matt Kern

Over the course of four games on Tuesday we moved from pitch to pitch, vigorously interrogating the opposition, picking holes in their defensive alibis, and parrying their offensive weaponry. We finished the night with a good hall of intel and sitting second in the rankings. 

Thursday didn't go so well. Despite Katie nailing the ball in the right hand netting with a hockey stick we swallowed a  few misdirections from the usual suspects (including eventual winners, the McLean Up Crew) and ended up a mustard-coloured smear on the astroturf. 

Anyone up for Risk?

A&E Platinum Members – Captain Laurie McKenzie

The Pink team did rather well considering we had Harriet, new Harry, Harry Chalk and Jack Chalk. Passing was confusing to say the least, but we managed to win some games with some great  hockey and came a respectable 4th.

Best B’haviour (Red) – Captain Bhav Virdi

Day 1: 3 wins and a draw. We all worked hard and goals were scored in each game except the drawn match. The day ended with the Reds ending on top of the table. 

Day 2: We lost our first game and won the next game which meant that we would play in the finals against the Greens! Yeahhhhhh! The finals started positively and Tom scored the opener after 2 minutes. The Greens came back strongly and scored 2 goals from PCs. We lost 1-2 in the end but it was a great experience. 

A few positives from this tournament: the teams were new and everyone were playing with others for the first time; however everyone gelled in very quickly, especially encouraged to see that the younger players stepped up and played attacking hockey. This should give us strength & belief to play positively though the 2017-2018 season. Good luck to all.

Russelling up Goals (Blue) – Captain Owen Russell

What is Club Night all about?

It’s the start of the new season, it’s greeting old friends, it’s meeting the new people to the club and showing them what we are all about, it’s about seeing how everyone has spent their summer. It’s

about having fun, running around, not getting injured, getting your eye in ready for the serious games. It’s certainly not about beating teams, or scoring goals – oh no, no. That would be wrong, against the spirit of things. 

So in essence the glorious Blue team was the real winner of Club Night IX – More conventional methods of ranking teams might mean that out of the seven teams we ended up just below sixth. But we defy convention and ignore those things like scores. 

I am contractually obliged to actually complete some sort of match report, so here goes… Overall – things didn’t really go well for us; on the first day we lost the first two, but scored a goal, drew the next, lost the last. But we didn’t end up bottom of the table! Bursting with confidence, we started the next day, picked up our other point in the first game, and were flying high. Final game we gave the eventual winners a tough run and a close call but lost to the odd goal in a one goal thriller... but alas bottom of the table was calling and the opportunity of an earlier finish than the others. 

Everyone on the team did fantastically well, massive thanks to all, especially the guys newer to hockey.  Always great to see a good number of new faces. We were the real winners, remember that! 

McLean Up Crew (Green) – Captain Robyn McLean

Day 1 of Club Night saw the Green team go from strength to strength! With two 0-0 games against the Reds and Whites we knew we had to up our game against the Pinks. They had a game plan with strategy and a sub plan; we, well, were winging it. It was a tough one but we prevailed; 2-1. Our final match of the day was against the Oranges. We weren’t taking any prisoners, our team was confident and with some super strikes we got 2 past the keeper to secure the game. Finishing 3rd in the table on the first day we posed a threat for day 2.

After great play on day 2, we managed to get ourselves into the final!! Whaaaat! We were up against the Reds who were looking dangerous but we were up to the challenge. Defending hard against

Bhav’s mighty team and although we conceded early in the match we battled on! Determined to show them who was boss we manged to find the back of the net twice before the final whistle – WINNERS! Absolutely fantastic teamwork, well done Greens!! #greentogreen