On a bright sunny morning M1 reached the shores of sandy March to play a hockey match and we were expecting a good contest.

As always March were playing tricks with their opponents and couldn’t provide with 2 home umpires, naughty boys! Jan travelled with the team to umpire a game 60 miles away from home. Thanks to him.

March scored 1^st from top of the D with one of their forwards dribbling past couple of our defenders and hitting the ball in the net. This woke up our forwards and especially Chris P. Paresh was now targeting Chris, like fish targets water. As skilful as Chris is every ball that he got, he made sure that it reached the March D. We got our first PC and that resulted in our first goal by Chris P. 1-1.

Dave Aston was holding the defence together on the left flank as was Chris G on the right. South had their tails up now. Russ scored the second when a through ball came to his stick on the left post and he slotted it home. 2-1 South!

March had come down from Div 1 to Div 3 and they showed their quality by equalising before the 2^nd half. 2-2 at the break.

March started the 2^nd half as the better team. They were attacking our goal with tenacity and were penetrating the D more often than the 1^st. Against the run of play, South managed to get a PC. But the ball didn’t roll out correctly from our insertion. Very unlucky there! March counter attacked and had 7 against our 3 defenders. March scored the 3^rd goal. March got a PC and they missed the insertion, just like us, the umpire asked to take it again. They scored their 4^th ! Very unlucky South! There had to be some controversy in the game!

March scored their 5^th when 10 minutes were left. This made the ex-captain Graham furious and his warrior chant of “Have some dignity guys! Play for some pride!” made the 11 south players turn into Rhinos! South attacked and this time they attacked like Rhinos on Red Bull! The defenders were fighting for the ball, and stood like SUMOs in a Japanese fight! The mid field’s passes were again going to the right attacker at the right time! One of the through balls from Paresh to Chris landed just outside the 25 and Chris with his Skill and speed went past 3 defenders slotted home the ball with one hand! He needs just 1 hand to play hockey. 3-5 with 7 minutes left.

Dave was now marching from the left defence to the opposite D. One of his cracking hits reached Graham’s stick and went in with 5 minutes left. 4-5! The crowd was now behind South and were chanting “Chris!!! Chris!!! Chris!!!”. But the game ended with South giving a very good fight to March on a very difficult, pitch on a very hot day with no subs. We came back with heads held high.

If we want to get promoted we must play like we did in the last 10 minutes for the rest of the 60 as well. Well done South and the next game is against the team which came down from Div 2; Peterborough 4s.