Men's Development vs Yateley 4's

The development team welcomed Paul Isherwood and his eleven year old son Patrick for their first games of adult hockey. Paul never having played hockey before acquitted himself well and as he said, I’m just going to get in the way of the opposition forwards which he did.

We had Stephen in goal with his son Nathan playing his second adult hockey game. Whilst Stephen was playing in goal for the first time, although you wouldn’t have guessed that as he appeared to be a natural throwing himself all over the place blocking shots. Nathan showed that he could play at this level with some much stronger passing than when he played his first game a couple of weeks ago. Ankur brought along his son Johan again for his first adult game. Johan started up front but at half time said he wasn’t happy playing there so I moved him to right back which turned out to be a baptism of fire and really tough for him but he stuck at it and wasn’t downhearted when the game finished. As his dad said afterwards, be careful what you ask for as JC will oblige and move you to a new position to give you a challenge.

The other newby in the team, although we could hardly call Roger Bowes “that” showed he could still stop the ball with a borrowed stick (He said that his wife had thrown all of his hockey stuff out some time ago.

At half time we were level with Mete scoring our first half equaliser by firing his shot across the keeper into the net.

Unfortunately the second half didn’t go as well as the first half and we started to leak goals. The young Yately forwards started to turn us older players into knots crossing the ball in front of our goalkeeper for some easy touch-ins at the far post. The principal difference between the teams were that the Yately youngsters had obviously played quite a bit more adult hockey whilst the Maidenhead players were just starting out on their hockey pathway and are probably six months of experience behind the opposition. I think that we all enjoyed the game notwithstanding the result and look forward to next week to try again.

Match report - JC