A ‘Bury’ good performance 
The M1s took a trip to arch-rivals, Bury St Edmunds, for their penultimate preseason game. Bury were supposed to be relegated to the league below, but now according to England Hockey’s merry-go-round GMS, look like they’ve had a reprieve and will be in division 1N this season. That made this matchup even more intriguing and competitive.
Special mention to Sporting Director, Sam Highfield, and Head Coach, Harry Schuman (for the day, at least), for travelling with the team and looking the part in some smart attire, despite both being injured. 
The match started fast, but not loose, with South ‘burying’ the opposition under a tidal wave of pressure from all angles. The Bury boys didn’t know what had hit them with South creating chance after chance and unfortunate not to score. The deadlock was eventually broken with Oscar ‘Shakira’ Serra finishing neatly at the back post from a wonderfully worked short corner routine. Alex Jones’ intensity at short corner practice nominally getting the moral-assist there.
South didn’t want to let up the pressure, and scored an even better goal from open play shortly after. A 1-2 between Serra and Humby, who surprisingly and unhungrily drew the keeper out but squared it to Serra who slotted it into the net for his second. 
South continued to dominate the half and were unlucky to not add more goals, unable to finish a few chances. 
At halftime the sporting director, Sam H, continued with devising more cunning plans via his trusty whiteboard, but mostly the advice essentially equated to continue what we had been doing. 
At the start of the second half Bury came alive a bit more and clearly wanted to try and crawl out of the hole they’d dug themselves. They changed their formation around a bit and tried to play with more intensity through South’s press. It didn’t work. All they could muster was one shot at goal, with goalkeeping giant, Big Daddy Dave, getting his one and only touch of the entire match to save a shot that was going high and wide anyway. 
South continued to manage the game well, selectively choosing when to up the tempo to try and get the killer goal. Some nice switching of play and passing culminated in what was almost the lemon-of-the-match moment with Nik Patel giving his seal of approval from a “NIIIICEEEE” pass from Connor Trimble.
We continued to push and look for that 3rd goal. Humby worked his way along the baseline into the D, going past 2 players, when the first beaten defender decided to rake his stick up his shinpad and hook it under his knee and yank back. Hangry Humby reacted somewhere on the spectrum between OTT and red-mist, and squared up to the defender. The umpire, despite having seen the deliberate and dangerous foul-play, decided to issue Hangry Humby with a yellow for reacting, but gave nothing to the initiator… Hangry retreated to the naughty corner, disappointed with himself that he’d let the team down but even more disappointed that he’d sewn up LOM, and given Nik P, or probably more likely Sam H, a reprieve. 
Despite being down a player South decided to turn up the intensity once again, with Scott Catley marauding his way through almost the entire Bury team to setup Ed Doust for a goal at the back post and ‘bury’ the opposition for good.