The Mens Vets backed their way decisively out of the National Men’s Cup as they were overmatched against a strong Norwich City outfit, and that despite South having arguably their strongest ever selection for a National Cup match. Basically we knew what was coming...but couldn’t do much about it.

The opening exchanges had promise. Very brief promise. We took centre, we attacked, we reached the edge of the Norwich circle. We lost the ball. They attacked in turn, looked slick (as had their warm-up) but misplaced a pass to give us possession back. From this a switch across the pitch was attempted. Arguably the ball was on...but the connection wasn’t clean and it went to a Norwich player in the centre of the pitch instead. Our recognition of the danger was painfully slow, resulting in a scrambling defence giving away a penalty corner. Not ideal when Cambridge’s Ben Hudson was guesting for Norwich. What came next was entirely predictable: swift inject, clean stop, drag flick, goal. By 10 minutes in and other two had been added, and it was game over already, with just a question of how many. The umpires said 8 by half-time, but Norwich are only claiming 7 on the GMS, so we will go with their word for it.

The second half saw Norwich’s scoring rate slow up significantly as it was their turn to deal with the low intense sun that turned players into silhouettes. That reduced the number of raking 50 metre passes from back to front, giving us a bit more of a foothold. Will worked the Norwich ’keeper, and James was arguably unlucky not to earn a penalty stroke when he was tripped in the circle - the Norwich players were saying, ‘Flick’, just so they could see how their goalie dealt with it I think. But even so Norwich were still much the more likely and would have ended on more than 11 if not for goalie Sean, who took the Player-of-the-Match nod as he really warmed up after the break - the stick save in the bottom corner in the last minute being the pick of his efforts.

Fortunately there is a Plate competition (called Tier 2) that we now enter, which will hopefully provide a more winnable game. And if it doesn’t EH have started a third tier of competition for first round losers in the Plate (this new entity labours under the title of the Shield) which we can aim for instead. Glory is just a run of defeats away!