They attacked. They won a short. They drag-flicked into the lower corner. Repeat ad infinitum. Or at least that is how it felt. Will H's pre-match optimism, which was quite pessimistic optimism to be fair, felt misplaced. They were very good, and clearly better than us.

We battled as hard as we could and threw bodies forward on the ground that losing 15-1 is better than 20-0. The main "if only" came when Vijay beat the (very handy) Blueharts goalie with a rebound strike from a penalty corner. Vijay caught this crisply, lifted it up...and yet it was still picked on the line by a home defender. Damn.

At the other end Ben watched penalty corner drag flicks whizzing by him but still saved plenty in open play. He was overworked. This was apparently his first defeat on his return to hockey after a very serious accident. So sobering...but not as much as the life stuff. For skipper Nev this was a first ever defeat against Blueharts. Compressing it all into one game makes sense. Efficient. We are efficient: for instance, we have reached the Shield, where we want to be (can there be direct entry to that competition in future, England Hockey??). Fingers crossed we get a club who draw their O35s team from similar Saturday sides as we do in Round 1 of that.