Cheam M1s 7 - 4 Bank of England M1s

On a bizarre day of hockey, Bank of England's 'fine dining' clubhouse caused controversy, as they proved to be far meaner than their team's defence.

Your Cheam heroes rocked up to the final league game before Christmas in a reasonable mid-table position. Not quite where we would have liked to be, and possibly we could (and should) have been higher, but for drawing a number of games from winning positions. But all in all, with the number of injuries and absentees in the first half of the season, and considering we had just been promoted, mid-table was not a bad start to build on. Last week Cheam had an abberation against bottom of the pile Barnes 2s, drawing 1-1 after a dismal display, so we were hoping for a good bounce-back performance to take us into Christmas.

Cheam were buoyed early on by the sight of the Gault brothers (Will Gault and James Gault - of Jill Gault for short) sat in the children's playground by the pitch as we all arrived, clearly in their element and securing themselves an early DOTD nomination.

This game showed up Cheam M1s Jekyll and Hyde (or Santa and Grinch?) nature. Periods of the game played extremely well, in which we passed well, played with pace and punished the Bank squad. However, at other times we held the ball too long, tried to play up the same channels and, of course, conceded 4 goals in bizarre fashion - all from short corners, but none particularly great!

Still, 7 goals scored by Cheam secured a reasonably comfortable 3 points. Some of the game highlights were -

1. Seb Jennings scoring 5 goals, knocking Simon Higgins off our Fantasy Points top scorer list just in time for Christmas. Seb hadn't scored a goal in open play all season, unheard of for a forward, but with the holiday season upon us, he emptied his sack (of goals) all over the Bank of England goalmouth like a bad Santa. I know, I paint a vivid picture.
2. Andrew Oldale's reaction as he saw another potential clean sheet vanish into thin air.
3. William Gunn achieving Jamie Vardy-esque consistency...just not for goalscoring.
4. Following on from the above, William Gunn achieiving two early Christmas cards, and possibly doubling his annual subs in fines across the first half of the season alone.
5. William Gunn body-checking a BoE player, lying face down in the turf for about 30 seconds in despair and then subbing himself off in an atempt to avoid getting a yellow card.
6. Gunny failing and getting yellow carded on the side-lines.
7. Gunny having to console himself on his card streak with a post-game Slush Puppy.

All in all, it is a minor miracle Gunny didn't pick up DOTD, with that accolade going jointly to the Gault brothers for their playground shenanigans.

Post-match was where the real controversy emerged however. BoE have a pretty plush set-up and are clearly rolling in the cash. We were expecting some decent match teas in keeping with this. Expectations were raised when we entered their dining area with options for chicken pie, burgers, steak pie, jacket potatoes etc. It was looking good. then the lady at the counter told us we weren't able to have any of that. We were getting sausage roll, chips and beans. Then she brought them out. HALF a sausage roll, chips and beans per player. Considering only 7 of us went back for teas, HALF a sausage roll each seemed a little scrooge-esque, but that's the Bank of England canteen for you. Perhaps take a note out of the Surrey Spartans book of post-match teas for next year??

Cheam M1s then headed to the Christmas dinner to make some poor life choices. Team initiations were duly administered to our raft of debutants this season, with Harry Reynolds providing the absolute highlight - video attached to this report!

The team rose a couple of places in the division with this result to finish the first half of the season in 5th place. Merry Christmas!