A game of two halves

First half - St Neots, including some familiar faces, decided that a slight deficit in numbers was a minor detail. They played intelligent positive hockey, led by their star forward Roooooop-something, and gave the home team an unexpected run around. Luckily Cambridge South grabbed the only goal, a thunderbolt from Avi Sharma from distance. Avi had otherwise adopted more novel tactics – a.k.a. “the airshot” – on a few occasions which, together with a brief two minute absence at the behest of the umpire, earned him the Lemon award. For the other sixty-eight minutes he basically dominated midfield.

Second half - a stirring half time speech from MSG did the trick as the M5s adopted a different approach thereafter, i.e using the space and width + passing to a man in a space + not running into trouble. This paid dividends immediately when Jo “dynamo” Dant weaved his 100mph magic on the right wing, and passed to the waiting centre forward Paul South who couldn’t miss. And didn’t. Two-nil.

Shortly afterwards winger John Greaves, lurking by the p-spot, was presented with the ball via a pinpioint pass from midfielder JelleyMarshman - seemingly able to be in two places at once. With about one minute of time and an invisible goalkeeper, he coolly dribbled the ball into the net. Three-nil.

This was rather better and although St Neots stuck to the task the home team were now in full-ish control. The ball spent increasing amounts of time in the St Neots D, and it was that man Greaves again who grabbed the final goal with a hefty tonk through a melee - including the now visible keeper.

Two goals, a few whizzy crosses, the usual display of what umpires confusingly call “stick tackles” and skilled use of the feet in controlling the ball earned him the Man of the Match accolade, narrowly pipping masterful right back Martin Grove.

Throughout the game Martin G and his calm and effective compadres in defence, GardinerWellsSteed, amused themselves by passing across the pitch around the back. Actually a very effective game switching tactic which higher teams should maybe consider. Oh wait…

A game played in good spirit, with St Neots cheerfully ignoring the challenges and battling well. Roll on next week: a top of the table clash vs Nomads. Let’s make it five wins in a row…