Mixed-A 1-5 St Ives Mixed

South’s mixed team made the short trip to St Ives on Sunday, to face their young team in the Southerners' opening match of the season.

A late player withdrawal from both teams meant a ten-a-side game was settled on, and the match began in pleasantly warm conditions. Unfortunately for South, St Ives began a lot more strongly, playing more as a team, and were soon two goals up, one from a short, the other from their left winger on the reverse stick, on the spin.

South then sorted their defence out and held St Ives off for most of the rest of the half, without producing that much going forward themselves. The Saints added a somewhat fortuitous third in the dying minutes of the half, the left winger again shooting, with the ball taking a deflection off a defenders stick directly in front of South keeper Lino Di Lorenzo who, to quote, had, “Had that one well covered!”

After a half time team talk about concentrating on the basics of hockey, and being more vocal about demanding the ball, South came out in the second half looking a much better side. A number of passing moves were worked that saw the St Ives goal begin to be properly threatened and gave their keeper some more to do. One such move saw forward Tash Cox worked through one-on-one, but she fired wide when confronted with the onrushing goalie.

However, during this time the Saints were continuing to play their own fine brand of hockey when on the ball, switching the ball around at the back to great effect, pulling the South defence and midfield from side to side. Such ball movement lead to two further goals, one from that ubiquitous left-winger for his hat-trick.

The final word of the game belonged to South, however. Good fast interplay in the midfield between Gemma Thomas, Tash Cox and Kevin Rowland saw the ball worked up to forward John Sharp, clean through. John’s first touch was maybe a bit heavy and the St Ives keeper came rushing out to the edge of her D to kick clear, but under pressure from John all that was achieved was returning the ball to Kev, twenty yards out. He took it back into the D, and cracked a shot into the bottom corner past a keeper stuck in no-mans-land.

Overall, this was a good game, played in the right spirit, and possibly some helpful pointers from watching what St Ives were up to as to how to play this sport well!

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