• Home
• Match Reports
  • Latest Match Reports
  • Match Reports 09-10
  • Match Reports 08-09
  • Match Reports 07-08
  • Match Reports 06-07
  • Match Reports 05-06
  • Match Reports 04-05
• First Team
• Second Team
• Third Team
• Fourth Team
• Fifth Team
• Veterans Team
• Ladies 1st Team
• Sutton Russets
• Junior Hockey
• Find Us
• Club Information
• Find Other Grounds
• Galleries
• Hockey Rules
• Join Us

Match Reports 10 October 2009

• 

  Fixture

  Lewes, 10 October 2009

  Result

  3 - 3 DRAW ( M Gillette, T Forster, A Turnill )

  Venue

  Report

  A tough first away game as Lewes had been recently relegated from the Premier league and were looking to make the return immediately. Lewes dominated at the start and for the first 10 minutes SV weathered the storm with some fine defending, notably from David Brignall and Rob Bray. A change in our defensive press denied their outlet to the right hand side and SV increasingly came into the game. Towards the end of the half new signing Mike Gillette (bought in for our old age diversity policy as well as his ability) made a scoring debut with a slick deflection in the D. Half time, 1-0 up and Lewes becoming ratty.

  Unfortunately SV continued their habit of starting slowly at the start of any half they play and conceded an early goal through a direct corner strike. A collective responsibility was taken and SV dominated the next 10 minutes of play and went 3-1 up with another exocet corner from Tim and a calm finish from Andy.T. In truth the game should have been closed out from here but Lewes came back strongly and scored from open play after their right winger dribbled past 4 SV players and passed to an unmarked man in the D - Alan Hansen would have had a field day in analysis and it was a sloppy goal to give away.

  The drama continued to unfold when a red card was given to a Lewes player who decided to lash GK Will Fuller full in the face with his stick from a yard. In a true GK response Will carried on with the minimum of fuss and in-fact subsequently owned up to rolling theatrically on the ground needlessly. With just 3 minutes to go Lewes forced a corner and scored through a strong drag flick. In all honesty, a draw was a fair result and a point away from a side who will be at the top end of the table was a good result.

• 

  Fixture

  Deal, 10 October 2009

  Result

  2 - 3 LOSS ( L Mitchell, P Parmar )

  Venue

  Away

  Report

  SV turned up at Dover with no umpire and only a bare 11. Luckily Deal were able to supply both for the first half, but we had to play with only 10 in the second half. We started the first half with only 10 whilst our left wing waited for the RAC to help him get to us, but luckily we were briefly up to 11 for the last 10 of the first half when he arrived!

  Despite us arriving with a pretty settled team and coming off the back of a reasonable pre-season, the confidence was quickly eroded when Deal's centre forward picked up the ball for the first time and single handedly beat our defence! At this moment we knew we would have problems!

  We worked had in the first half and had some good attacks and in general defended ok, but were undone by an exceptional first half hatrick, the final goal being the best of the lot - turning his way past Phil, Nick and Iain before chipping Olly into the top corner on his reverse stick...let's hope he's unavailable when they come to us!! Half time came, we had to nominate someone to umpire, and Alan Day kindly offered, and did a very good job.

  At half time, we quickly highlighted where the main threat was coming from and decided that Richard would play deeper and sit on him. The plan worked as he hardly got a touch in the second half.

  Second half started really well for SV with the ball being played confidently out of defence and then being pinged around the rest of the pitch. The defence played strongly as a unit and kept the Deal forward line at bay, Nick Gray and Richard commanded the middle, creating the platform for Lewis to cause havoc down the left and Nick R down the right. With good running up front from Pradeep and good strong forward play from Al, we were dominating the game. We won a number of short corners, and from one of these the quick reactions from Al resulted in the Deal defender stopping his shot on the line with his foot. Lewis converted the resulting P-flick to give us some hope.

  We continued putting pressure on the Deal D with ball after ball being fired in from all angles, resulting in more short corners and long corners and plenty of shots before finally one of these resulted in Pradeep receiving the ball free in the D and quickly dispatched it to put the score at 2-3. With around 10mins remaining we were very confident of at least getting a draw...we were pinning them back in their D - at one long corner we had only 2 including the keeper in our own half.

  Despite the shot tally and great pressure we managed to help Deal hold onto the three points by almost clearing off their goal line, when it should have been easier to score!!

  The match finished with us losing 3-2. We all were delighted with the performance and thoroughly enjoyed our first league match of the season. With two new players joining us next week the season is looking very positive.

  For the second half performance, any one of us could have warranted the man of the match award, but for selflessly offering to umpire the second half Alan Day gets the award, thanks again Al.

  Team

  Olly Aldridge; Iain Simmons, Phil Morris, Nick Hall; Richard Ashness, Nick Gray, Lewis Mitchell, Alan Day; Nick Ryder, Al Burt, Pradeep Parmar

  MoM

  Alan Day

• 

  Fixture

  Chelmsford Evergreens, 10 October 2009

  Result

  3 - 5 LOSS ( S Bates, B Rogers [loaned], P Linaker )

  Venue

  Away

  Report

  Having had only 10 potential players and no umpire at the beginning of the week, the situation deteriorated to 7 players and no umpire by Saturday. However, Chelmsford had been kept aware of the problem and had offered to loan some players to even up the numbers for this friendly game; typical of the good spirit of this side.

  So it was that the game went ahead with 10 players on each side, and just one umpire, quickly developing into the sort of cut and thrust game expected here. Although Chelmsford had the better approach play, the first blood went to Valence when one attacking move up the right came together perfectly, and the pass across the dee was pushed past the Chelmsford defence by Stuart Bates.

  Chelmsford responded positively and their careful building of attacks had its reward as they drew level and then went ahead from open play.

  In the second half it was more of the same, with well built attacks by Chelmsford being broken down by an effective Valence defence on most occasions, as Valence resorted to attacking on the break, but too often wasting opportunities due to passing breakdowns. In this period Chelmsford went ahead and then widened the gap, but then Valence started to string more attacks together and loaned player, Barry Rogers, put one away and then from a number of won short corners Paul Linaker pounced on a partly blocked shot to put the ball past the keeper to even the score at three all.

  That might well have been a suitable final score, but Chelmsford upped their attacking game again, and their super-vet Gerald scored two more, the last from a close but very fine angle.

  Team

  Dave Britton; Gray Smith-Laing; Hamish Dow; Steve Mole; Stuart Bates; Roger Fermor; Paul Linaker. Umpire: Provided by Chelmsford.

  MoM

  Hamish Dow, for having had the sense to join the Vets at last. Played a sensible initial game, which will improve as he gets used to the speed of the game at this level.