Men's 1s vs East Grinstead 4

The boys in blue play their final game of the league.

Hailsham men's 1s played away at East Grinstead for their final league game of the year. Even though we went with a bare 11, we also went holding buckets of confidence that we were going to win. Strangely we had lots of confidence in left back today, not quite sure why....

The first half stared strong with Hailsham dominating possession and attacking hard, giving East Grinstead only one option, hit it long and play for territory. Whilst Hailsham were playing out from the back on one of these occassions, Bailey thought that Ryan hadn't been doing a lot in goal recently with lots of clean sheets. Therefore, he decided he would give EGs centre forward a chance a goal by passing him the ball at the top of the D. As Bailey predicted, Ryan would go on to save the shot, thus giving him something to do for the game. This would go on the be EGs only shot in the game, which shows how the rest of this report is going to go.

The goals started with Josh Smith-Jones hitting the target on a drag flick, and opened the flood gate. The second goal was from Chris who rocketed a slap shot from 4 yards out to find the top corner, the first of 2 for him this half. Chris could have had a chance at his hat-trick, when he beat the 2 centre backs, and the goal keeper for a clean shot at goal at the top of the D. But then decided it would be better to continue dribbling the ball out for an EG sideline. After this, a well worked short corner resulted in Bailey slapping a ball across goal back to Flo who had a cheeky behind the back deflection for the 3rd goal. During the first half Sam R decided to have a quiet debate with the umpires, which unfortunatly resulted in a green card. This was uncharacteristic of the usual calm and rational Sam Rahm. Halftime, 4-0.

Going into the second half the goal gate continued to open with Chris getting his hat-trick with a dubious goal/cross that deflected off of a defender and went in. Some say he shot, some say he was yet again trying to find the sideline, who knows. Dave also scored a monster deflection finding goal number 6. Some fantastic pressing meant that EG could not get the ball out of their half. When this is combined with silky one touch passes from Hailsham it resulted in another goal for Josh Smith-Jones and another hat-trick, this time from Josh Higgs.

Final score was 10-0 to the boys in blue, and fantastic way to round of a fantastic league of Hockey. Now the focus turns to the cup with the semi-final next weekend.

MotM - Kirk Manning for a dominant display in right back with great tackles and excellent distribution.

DotD - Bailey Freeland-Jones for giving the ball to the centre forward to give Ryan something to do.