OKs M1 3 v 3 Cheam M3

By Molly

It's a funny old game Brian. Unlike last week, last Saturday saw us looking forward to playing in a 10.30 push back in glorious sunshine on a pitch like carpet under the gaze of Hampton Court. The week had seen a scramble for players and saw the return of Harry &, Fisty from Uni, Krish from Skiing / Rugby and a debut for some random called Ed.

Unfortunately in the first half we played as if we were in awe of our surroundings. We were terrible. Think of something and we did it. Give the ball away at 16’s – check. Fail to string three passes to each other – check. Mark our men - don't even hope. Even Koen’s aerials were embarrassing whilst Taylor realised he had forgotten his shin pads.

Maybe we should all learn to turn up on time and change quicker to allow us proper time to warm up? In fairness Chris had a bad case of the trots and kept running off to keep his brown rage in check, so we were a little disorganised. By the time we had finished what we needed to do we only had five minutes to actually have a team talk and pepper mikes goal with a few tame shots.

Not surprisingly we soon found ourselves on the back foot. Taylor was over run in midfield as they sat back and then burst through in numbers leaving us more exposed than Chris on a porter loo. They had also had numerous short corners, but despite having a mothers meeting on top of the D before each corner, they amazingly failed to convert any.

The goals were not long coming though because, as Chris knows all too well, you can't hold back the flood for ever. I cant remember much of them tbh as the swarm of attackers were a blur in front of my eyes, with our midfield distant specks on the horizon. All I know is that for the second goal poor old Gaz had tracked back from up front and had a choice of three free men to choose from. Then a fourth popped up to score as we all looked around not knowing whether to laugh, cry or in Mike’s case have a nervous breakdown. He must think he is Bill Murray in Groundhog Day every week.

That's when Chris and Koen got us together at half time and earned their money by changing things. Harry moved to centre back whilst Koen pushed himself and Dan up as centre mids in a switch to 4-4-2 or possibly 4-2-3-1. I don’t really know as I was too busy eating jelly babies and thinking chris looked very pale. I do remember saying that if we got one goal back they would panic but I didn’t realistic how right I’d be.

The second half didn't start much better though. Chris, dehydrated from all his runs, couldn’t count up to 11 and so we started the game started with 10 as various confused looks as to who was playing where. We even started shouting at each other apparently but I couldn't verify this as I couldn't hear anyone else over my own voice.

Then something beautiful happened. We all actually remembered how to play hockey. Suddenly the ball was passed crisply round the back and transferred down the wings to sticks and at speed. Im not sure who was more stunned the oppo or us. It was as if we found the tap and really turned it on (or was that poor old Chris again???).

We were transformed from the first half and soon went from 2-0 down to 2-3 up (and we have video to prove it)! Gaz turned into Gazatron the goal scoring machine, whilst Sammy, who had seemingly spent the first half talking selfies, also game to life and tormented the defence down our right hand side. There were dummy's, nutmegs, lobs over the keeper and screams of delight from Luna. Fisty and Alex (whom I keep calling Chris cos he reminds me of Chris Martin from Coldplay) revelled in the extra space whilst Pearson and Taylor sat in and kept random attacks at bay. Michael Bay couldn't do justice the transformation (no really his films are crap) so I will leave you to watch Sammy’s excellent video editing instead.

Harry played a blinder passing and running it out at the back despite being being hacked more times than TalkTalk. He did very well to control his temper as despite the fact that Clintons could have got planning permission for a superstore, the umpire just told him he had to ‘get used to it’.

Just when we dared to dream of a shock win, one of their mothers meetings paid off and they scored a scrappy goal from a short corner. Frustrating but as they had 10 or more of them in total they had to score one of them.

The last five minutes was end to end stuff (sorry Chris no pun intended) as each team pushed for a winner. Krish missed a great chance to win it at the end, but all in all we left satisfied with a point. Yes we could have won it but this was a side that were second going into the game and were 2-0 up at half time.

After fantastically warm showers (with soap dispensers and everything) and a mix up with teas, we all rushed back to replace lost fluids, with Blossum’s crazed speeding and excessive horn earning him DOTD. MOTM was shared between Gaz and Koen for their goals and tactical expertise respectively. Personally I hope Gaz won it as a) he’s an arsenal fan so not used to winning anything except fourth, whilst b) Koen deserves nothing for causing us all to lose battery life reading his drunken political rants on whats app the previous night.

So we keep our good run of 2017 going. Six points out of a possible 12 have come in 2017 when we only had three at this stage in the first half of the season. Bring on the league leaders Chertsey.