U11A v The Elms Won 1-0

An opportunist goal, scored by Alex Woolhouse, gave S.Anselm’s an unexpected win against stronger opposition in this short game (due to our frustratingly late arrival and The Elms inflexible tea schedule!). Our simple game plan couldn’t have worked better. All seven behind the ball when The Elms in possession, a quick breakout to the wings to play to our strength when we had the ball. It worked well down the left wing with Alex Woolhouse accelerating nicely to put pressure on their back line. On the right wing, Lewis Herdman often found himself in central midfield as Charlie Speed was so deep in defence, supporting Ollie Rudd and Harvey Williams that we needed Lewis Herdman to play more centrally to relay the ball to Edward Salisbury. It wasn’t attractive hockey at times and we are so short of practice (if it doesn’t rain or snow next Monday, we’ll have 3½ practice sessions this term, compared to about 25 rugby last term!) but full marks to the team for giving there all in the final away hockey match I’ll take at S.Anselm’s, something they knew before the match began.
The Elms dominated from the off and it was our tight defence and numbers back which kept them at bay. Ollie Rudd stopped the ball well and cleared effectively to the side many times whilst Harvey Williams was strong in the tackle and started some attacking moves as well. Charlie Speed was a fairly intimidating presence in the defensive midfielders role but, without Nick Price having to make too many actual saves, the ball was shooting from one side of our ‘D’ to the other worryingly often! The Elms had three short corners and twice the ball was struck inches wide of the far post. One attack from open play struck the post hard … we were riding our luck well …! Edward Salisbury did his best, as ever, but he found it hard to get forward – a bit like against Foremarke – as he was digging in so deep. As the match progressed, we had more attacking moves. We won the match as The Elms failed to defend in numbers as we did at our end. We had quite a few breaks and had a few opportunities ourselves before Alex Woolhouse netted from close range. The Elms were back on the attack, but with some lusty clearances, the ball running out of play and some increasingly skillful touches we held on. As I also said to the team before the match, we were always going to lose (on astro) to Foremarke and beat (on grass) Grosvenor … it’s matches like this one that play such a part in summing up the season as being a successful one or not, and it’s another ‘W’ this evening!