With the Cambridge Half Marathon on Sunday, the M2s were looking very short of players. Originally with 12 players, we lost Will to illness during the week, but made it to Saturday morning with a bare 11 to take to Kettering. This was the away leg against Kettering 1s, who we’d held to a close draw at home earlier in the season. However, with only an hour before the meet, news circulated that Blair now wasn’t able to play. There were varying reports of the reasons why, but the most prominent theory involved a bout of sickness brought on from losing a game of pool to Gando. 

With low availability across all the teams this week, we left Long Road with only 10 players. Our amazing Club Captain Jack Chalk managed to secure a last-minute emergency league exemption and there was a massive call-up for 5s player Kieran Birch, who had just finished a game in Kettering. He was coming off the back of a man-of-the-match appearance and hoping to replicate for the M2s. 

The game started a little tentatively as we looked to find our feet and work out how we each played. For the first 15 minutes or so we held strong, happy to transfer the ball round the back and equally our press was forcing Kettering to do the same. We had some probing chances, building through Dimi, who was always offering an outlet for the defence, but Kettering managed to get the ball to a player at the top of our D who then swiftly made it 1-0 to the home team. A second goal followed with a man on the back post who deflected the ball past Matt to make it 2-0 at the end of the first half. 

We came out looking for some further chances and hoping to get a goal on the scoreboard as we were very much still in the game. After 15 minutes, with a counterattack building up the left hand side of the pitch, Dave Aston started sprinting up the pitch and Dimi filling in for him at centre back. As the ball made its way into the D from the left hand corner, Dave was at the P spot and fired it home for his first goal since the 17-18 season (@Dave, it interestingly looks like you’ve only had LoMs for the last 5 seasons - must’ve been some sort of error in the stat collections there...). Kettering were still putting up a fight and hassling us with lots of short corners and D entrances. We were repelling where possible but another goal followed and a P flick in the closing stages ended the game at 4-1 to Kettering. 

Considering how few of us regularly play together, we turned up with a great team and put up a really strong fight - MoM went to Kieran for his starring appearance to make it two in one day after a long day of hockey in Kettering. We go again next week and look to close this season out strongly in the last few games.