Away win for Monarchs

The 150 mile round trip to Wootton was off to a good start as the weather was kind to us with a brisk but mostly sunny afternoon outside Northampton. We were helped also by two new and very welcome additions to the team in the form of Matt and Mark - who both made excellent contributions to the team and gave us the luxury of 12 players - this turned out to be doubly important after Ash pulled his hamstring towards the end of the first half.

The game started at a good pace and Wootton almost immediately threatened our goal but were seen off by stout defending from the back 4 of Matt, James, Wayne and Nick. We were passing and moving well and made good use of Joe down the right as he clearly had the better of the opposition and would go on to cause them considerable problems on that side of the pitch for the duration of the game.

First blood came to the Monarchs after about 10 minutes following a flowing move from the midfield down to the right corner from where JC popped a lovely ball into the D which Viren was quick to pounce on and place neatly through the keepers legs for 1-0. More end to end play continued with a few missed chances for the Monarchs and some short corners at both ends which were not capitalised on effectively. There was consistent and excellent defensive play from the Monarchs with Wayne putting massive tackles in all over the place and Nick bravely running down and blocking a big short corner shot.

Eventually however Wootton persistence was awarded with an equaliser after a bit of a melee around the top of the D. The first half ended 1-1 which didn’t really reflect the balance of play.

H2 was more of the same open play and end to end hockey but after a strong team talk the Monarchs stuck well to the task and made better use of possession to control play and put together some good passes. This resulted in a fine passage of play by Mark and Clint that cut Wootton apart and put Viren in to secure his second goal 2-1.
For the remainder of the half the Monarchs took more and more control and pressed almost constantly. There were many short corners but no reward unfortunately until in the dying moments of the game a short was awarded as the full time whistle blew. Tim stepped up and his intentional miss hit was deflected into the goal masterfully by Joe who had run onto the right post. 3-1 it ended, and our strong performance was clear when Karl proudly claimed that he hadn’t touched the ball in the second half!

Man of the match is a tough one this week as rightly it could go to a number of players. However, for being everywhere, for putting in countless crunching tackles, for controlling so much of the play and for causing Wootton all sorts of problems, my MOTM is Wayne. ?
Match Report by Tim Brennan