Men's 3rd XI: Another Epic Against Kettering

My mother is the sort of person who likes to plan ahead. Indeed, it is something of an affectionate joke within our family that within two mintues of discussion on some family activity which may or may not happen in about three months time she will be wanting to work out where everyone is going to sleep and what we are all going to eat. So it is a little surprising under the circumstances that she managed to give birth to me during the hockey season, and more specifically on a date which means that I missed the biggest match of the season so far while entertaining her and my sister on a birthday visit to Cambridge. On the plus side, I got to enjoy a first time visit to hugely impressive Ely Cathedral, then home for tea and Mum's excellent home-made birthday cake, before heading out for a very enjoyable birthday meal. I did however not get to play in or watch the match, so this is one more of those match reports pieced together from texts from Rich, an e-mail from Garth, and various conversations with umpires and players at training on Tuesday.

So, all duly credited as above, what seems to have transpired is . . .

With a blend of youth and experience we took it to the league leaders and had the lion's share of the game in the first half until Kettering scored from a short corner following a special tackle from Carl. He got it 50% right , the 50% he got wrong was when he used the wrong side of the stick. So their first shot on goal went in, according to Garth, but according to Rich it was at least their second because he wants credit for saving the first strike before a Kettering forward swept in the rebound. First, second, whatever, 1-0 down at half-time.

Anyway we certainly rallied second half and equalised following a devastating and penentrating run from Garth (it says here) who slipped it left to Woody to slot home for a neatly taken goal. The rest of the game saw us up their end, them up at our end, and with the game descending into a rather fractious affair, or a tight match between two very competitive sides competing at the top end of the table, depending on your point of view. However, as ever in these situations, beer does turn out to be a great healer.

Woody's afternoon sadly ended early thanks to a blow from an opponent's stick. I am going to go all Wenger on this and say I couldn't really see the incident, what with the various TV screens in Ely Cathedral being more concerned with reconstructions of medieval life than the live feed from Coldhams, but we wish him well for a speedy recovery and to see him back in action after Christmas.

We might have nicked it at the end but it wasn’t to be, and general consensus seems to be that the draw was a fair result in the end. There were two epic games between these two sides last season, with a 1-1 at Coldhams and us losing 4-3 at Kettering after being 3-1 up. This one was absolutely in that tradition, very enjoyable, highly competitive, and wouldn't it be great if there was still something riding on our visit to Kettering for the last match of the season.