Warning: All aspects of Long Road not performing their best

We arrive promptly for the meet time, but are shocked to discover no toilets, this is a big problem. The team does on average 3 wees per person in the time between meeting and getting on the pitch. Warm up now incorporates a full squad toilet stop in the main building.

Stick and ball warm up on pitch goes ok, although there was confusion around if we should be doing a shooting box, or 3v2. Some people were nicely passing the ball around, others (Hannah and Tildy) were confused and just played a 1v1 through the middle of everyone #OrganisedChaos

The game did not start as well as expected, we were hoping for lols and goals, but were disappointed to find we weren’t scoring any goals, and there were limited lols. Everyone individually played quite well, both for South and Peterborough, although neither team managed to make good connections. As Nichola observed, there were just 22 people running around playing hockey, rather than two coherent teams #facts. We had a spread of MOM votes, Evie worked hard in the middle, and our defence did a great job of keeping a clean sheet. All the Izzy’s picked up a few votes, but it was Izzy P that was voted top Izzy this week.

It is the first game in weeks that we remembered to play our anthem, Evergreen, although I managed to take it too literally and picked up a green card. I shall talk you through the events as I see them...There was a scramble between me, and a Peterborough player, during which the whistle goes and they get a free hit. Unfortunately I only manage to step back a few centimetres, before I hear Tim shout “intercept” on the sidelines, I make the tackle, win the ball and immediately get sent off. Turns out Tim said “take a step” as in take a step back from the ball, not very clear if you ask me. I would like to dedicate this green card to Tim, although I will remember to engage my own brain before blindly following instruction from the sidelines in the future.

Our new favourite approach to playing hockey is to spend 60 mins faffing around with the ball and most of the possession, but failing to find the goal. In the last 10 mins we managed to get a short corner and run our trusty routine, straight to Tildy for big sweep across goal. It was all a bit of a mess, the ball hitting a few Peterborough feet on the line which they then launched up at boob height. Luckily I was there to skillfully place the ball in the goal and no boobs were harmed in the process.

The whistle goes and we won 1-0, we have yet again, clawed 3 points from the grasp of East Hockey. We go to enjoy our usual shower club, but find that the showers are out of order too, very disappointing, so far Long Road is scoring a 0/1 for toilets, showers and overall general match playing ability.

After the game, and our mediocre performance, we were treated to a fantastic array of homemade cakes, flapjack and toffee from Kate’s mum and Hannah’s parents, they are very proud of us. I would liken the post match feeling to that of 5 year old children who have just done the most dreadful crayon and jam drawing, but your mum is delighted and it takes pride of place on the fridge and you get given a biscuit for all your hard work. We leave full of sugar, feeling loved, and ready for another nail biting experience next week.

Ps my mum says I am always changing tenses, and I believe Kate’s mum is an English teacher, apologies to all affected.