Jan has done ¾ of this match report stuff, so I’ll just add a bit of meat onto the bones…

England Hockey Mixed Tier 1 Championships. Yes that is right, Tier 1, The top tier, the last 32 none the less. The top 32 mixed teams in the whole country, and we made it into this round (let’s not dwell on the previous round where Felixstowe cancelled on us), so as far as I am concerned Cambridge South Mixed Team is at least the 32^nd best team in the whole of England! Kaboom!

We exited the National Mixed Trophy at Ipswich yesterday, despite the defensive efforts of player-of-the-match Emily Morris and a fine display by ‘keeper George Toynton. Jan also had a good match at the back, and so did Hannah, who made up the defensive back line with that old idiot Colin T, who spent the day launching bad-misguided aerials around the pitch and making a fool of himself with the collection of match fees, Maths is not one of my strong points. [Ed - the aerial highlight was the one where Col set-up a 16, scanned the pitch ahead, and then threw the ball straight out of play right in the corner of the pitch... I can see some readers are ahead of me here - yes the corner at our end!]

We knew we were in for a tough match as Ipswich’s Saturday 1st XIs play several tiers higher up the Hockey pyramid, and any chance of a shock disappeared in the first ten minutes as the hosts scored twice.

The first five minutes we were all like “Whoa, is this even hockey? These guys are pros”, but we soon found our feet and stepped up our game. We gradually adapted to the pace Ipswich played the game at, keeping things competitive well into the second half with Ali, Soph, IMP and Alice W all drawing good saves from the home ‘keeper. However Ipswich also added two more during this period, and then ran away with it in the final 15 minutes as we ran out of steam. I was predicting they were going to win 16-0, so 8-0 is a quality result in my book!

Ipswich were a good side and excellent hosts, providing a great hockey pitch, two umpires and some quality match teas. We wish them good luck with the rest of the tournament, and we can now concentrate on some more evenly matched friendlies for the rest of the season.