A game of the proverbial two halves with Maidenhead dominating the first half and then falling off the pace in the second half.
Starting strongly with Alex and Nathan running rings around the Staines defenders, resulted in a number of penalty corners.
On the third one, Rob dragged out to JC who pushed the return back to Rob running in on the left hand post, a slapped shot caused the Staines goal keeper to lie on the ball resulting in a Penalty stroke.After a number of refusals to take the PS, George gamely stepped up and put the ball past the Staines keeper. Further interplay eventually led to Rob (For his second assist) smacking the ball across the top of the D right to left, which Chris had to stretch for but then deflected into the net for the two goal lead.
In the second half Staines started to pass the ball around and caused quite a few issues with the defence who on many occasions, smuggled or scrambled the ball away from danger. Eventually an offense (And a resulting big bruise on Nicks foot) resulted in a Penalty Stroke for Staines.
Stephen in goal made a great save down to his left hand side which kept the teams spirit up to see out the game with the winning 2 -0 score line.
MOM must go to Paul playing at right back in the 3:4:3 set up, who marshalled and cut off all of the Staines attacking efforts down our right-hand side, often stepping in front of the players to cut the through passes off, then clearing the lines with a good pass out.
Overall, a very friendly and well played game of hockey with the mantra, don’t dribble, pass starting to sink into the teams psyche.
Match report - JC