Untitled Document

Westbury & United Banks HC: Results for Saturday 17/12/05

Team

Opponents

League

Scr

Scorers

1^st XI

v Bath Buccs II

Premier 2

2-1

Webster Poulsom

2^nd XI

v Shepton Mallet

friendly

1-1

Colquhoun

3^rd XI

v Shepton Mallet

friendly

can

Wanderers

v Shepton Mallet

friendly

8-0

Jones 3 Hipwell 2 Coates Watkins Taylor A

Wizards

v Westbury Warriors

Br & NW Som Div 3

1-3

Crofts

Warriors

v Westbury Wizards

Br & NW Som Div 3

3-1

Harvey 2 Colton

Widgets

v W Wilts IV

friendly

4-5

Millman S 2 Palmer M Holmes

Match comments

1^st XI: The first team came out ahead in this close, top-of-the-table encounter with Bath Buccs. The 3 points secured with goals from Webster and Poulsom which means Westbury jump ahead of Buccs in the table. They remain in position to go into the second half of the season and challenge for one of the promotion spots.

Prem 2	Pl	W	D	L	For	Agn	Diff	Pts
Cheltenham	14	8	3	3	61	38	23	27
City of Bath	11	8	1	2	47	21	26	25
Torbay	11	7	1	3	38	30	8	22
Westbury	11	7	1	3	32	24	8	22
Bath Buccs A	13	6	3	4	30	32	-2	21

2^nd XI: The seconds had an interesting game with Shepton Mallet 1st XI. The twos dominated the first half but only had a goal from Tom Colquhoun to show for their hard work and good play. JPS shone in a central midfield role. Shepton had two men forward and 4 in midfield in the second half, which stifled the second's play and the visitors quick breaks caused some anxious moments for the home team, leading to them earning a penalty stroke which they equalised from. Westbury stepped up a gear and put together a stronger spell of play but could not find the elusive winning goal.

Wanderers: Shepton Mallet were the latest team to be blitzed by the Wanderers. Ben Jones completed a hat-trick and Ian Hipwell notched two. Nick Coates, Dave Watkins and Alex Taylor completed the scoring.

Wizards v Warriors: This was the big game of the day. The Warriors started the stronger side and had the better posession in the first ten minutes. Will Halliday, who had an outstanding game controlled the play for the Warriors. The possession did not lead to any clear cut chances, but Steve Carter was the first keeper in action kicking a through ball clear. The nearest to goal the Warriors came was a Harry Newington cross that evaded any Warrior's sticks. The Wizards then began to get a grip of the game. Tim Denner surged forward with some good runs and Farrell, Rickard and Crofts began to look more dangerous. A string of short corners put pressure on the Warriors defence who coped effectively with all but pete Farrell's shot that went wide. The Warriors then countered and earned a short corner. Mark Colton stepped up the thump the ball home to give the Warriors a shock lead. The Wizards again had spells of pressure, but they were unable to turn this into a goal. The first half came with a confident looking Warriors team turning round one goal to the good. There were more shocks in store for the Wizards at the start of the second half, as both sides pushed forward. Sam Parker's through ball found Mike Harvey in the D, and Mike expertly glanced the ball past Steve Carter to take a 2-0 lead. The Wizards moved up a gear and had their best spell of the game. A short corner broke down, but was not cleared from George Banting's shot. Mark Crofts spun and hammered the ball home. There followed a period of backs to the wall defending for the Warriors. Mark Colton was a key figure at sweeper for the Warriors as his defence managed to keep the Wizard's attack from creating many clear cut openings. There was an interesting contest between Harry Newington and Paul Croker, with Harry being spoken to by Roger for using his stick to body check Poker. The Warriors lacked width in the second half, and never really penetrated the back line in order to produce the quality cross needed to score until one decisive move saw a cross from the right reach an unmarked Mike Harvey, who should have scored from around the penalty spot. At the other end Sam Banting was never stretched to make a save, but had to use his pads to keep out a number of shots. When he was beaten on one occasion, Pat Tampkins swept round and cleared off the line. With the clock running down the Warriors earned another short corner. Mark Colton again thumped it and Mike Harvey, this time, made no mistake in getting the vital touch to steer it into the net. There was still time for Pete Farrell to miss-hit the ball wide with an open goal at his mercy. This was an enthralling game with great commitment from both sides, the Wizards can be credited with the better hockey, whilst the Warriors can claim their short corner set pieces clinched the game (all three of their goals came from shorts). They also seemed to have the extra 5-10% determination to keep what they had got. Will Halliday and Mark Colton looked to be the most influential players on the Warriors side, and the Wizards defence played well to nullify the Warriors as they pushed forward. Both teams were a credit to the club and entertained the hardy band of spectators at a temperature a tad above freezing. The Warriors not only won the points they had the pies as well as the visiting team! The table shows both teams well placed at the half way point in the season.

Bristol & Som 3	Pl	W	D	L	For	Agn	Diff	Pts
Firebrands E	10	10	0	0	44	8	36	30
Westbury D	10	7	0	3	29	12	17	21
Westbury E	10	7	0	3	30	20	10	21

Widgets: Paul Croker and Chri Millman heard the call to arms and headed for the pitch behind the military base at Warminster to play W Wilts. It all went surprisingly well to start with. Will Holmes showed his skill down the right, feeding Steve Millman. Steve used his experience to attack the near post, slip it through to Martin Palmer who scored with ease. Then it all went pear shaped. The Widget's defence started handing out early Christmas presents in the way of poorly hit clearances. These were gratefully snapped up, unwrapped and turned into a 3-1 deficit! Basic hitting was very disappointing on a pitch which admittedly slowed the ball down through a lot of surface friction, but players must learn to get their feet round the ball! Steve Millman pulled a goal back after he took possession of the ball in the D, twisted and turned before hitting in at the near post. There was an improvement in play in the second half. Will Holmes showed his skills down the right. When he adds pace and body strength he is going to go places. Alan Collier received the ball out on the left and with a little help from his right foot controlled it and passed to Steve Millman. Steve's run took him into the D where he unleashed a blistering drive to make it 4-3. With 5 minutes left the ball was crossed from the right and Will Holmes tried to sweep it in at the far post, only to be stopped by the goalkeeper who had already kept out a string of shorts from Austin Sheppard and Martin Palmer. The ball was lying by the keeper. Many players would have tried to shovel it back under the keeper's body (not very clever!) Not Will, he pulled the ball back, used his feet to step right (Widget's defenders note his good use of the feet) and pushed it past a home defender and in the corner of the goal at his far post. 4-4! A great come back...but the worst case scenario came up! Several lunging tackles in the 36th minute were missed and a home forward struck at goal. The ball bounced off Sam Banting's pads to a Widget defender who only needed to make a good contact and hammer the ball away. The poor technique came up again. He topped the ball to an un marked forward who showed how to hit the ball properly with a thumping shot to win the game. An agonising end to a game which seemed lost for some time, then through some good play a superb come back was engineered, only to be thwarted at the death. I wonder if they have a firing squad on the base for errant defenders? Will Holmes caught the eye again and scored his first goal for the club. Chris Millmanput in a strong performance at right midfield.

Westbury & United Banks HC: Results for Saturday 10/12/05

Team

Opponents

League

Scr

Scorers

1^st XI

v City of Bath

Premier 2

5-3

Roper 2 Webster 2 Richardson

2^nd XI

v Bath Univ

North Div 2

0-5

3^rd XI

v W Wilts

friendly

can

By us

Wanderers

v Somerset Gryphons III

Br & NW Som Div2

8-1

Jones 2 Carter Taylor A Nichols G Ludley Millman S Hipwell

Wizards

friendly

Warriors

v Bath Buccs

friendly

1-3

Colton

Widgets

v Robinsons VI

Br & NW Som Div 4

2-1

Palmer M Pritchard

Westbury & United Banks HC: Results for Sunday 11/12/05

2^nd XI

v Devizes II

Cup

1-2

Pearce-Smith

Match comments

League tables at the end of the first half of the season:

Prem 2	Pl	W	D	L	For	Agn	Diff	Pts
City of Bath	11	8	1	2	47	21	26	25
Cheltenham	13	7	3	3	56	37	19	24
Torbay	11	7	1	3	38	30	8	22
Bath Buccs A	12	6	3	3	29	30	-1	21
Westbury	10	6	1	3	30	23	7	19

Div 2 N	Pl	W	D	L	For	Agn	Diff	Pts
Bath Univ	11	10	1	0	59	15	44	31
Westbury A	12	9	1	2	35	18	17	28

Bristol & Som 1	Pl	W	D	L	For	Agn	Diff	Pts
Som Gryphon A	10	9	0	1	34	18	16	27
Robinsons C	10	7	1	2	31	19	12	22
Westbury B	10	6	2	2	41	20	21	20

Bristol & Som 2	Pl	W	D	L	For	Agn	Diff	Pts
Westbury C	10	9	0	1	48	11	37	27
Bristol Univ C	10	8	0	2	43	12	31	24

Bristol & Som 3	Pl	W	D	L	For	Agn	Diff	Pts
Firebrands E	10	10	0	0	44	8	36	30
Westbury D	9	7	0	2	28	9	19	21
Westbury E	9	6	0	3	27	19	8	18

1^st XI: The first team pulled off their best result this season with a comfortable 5-3 win against the league leaders. Phil Meakin writes: The firsts are putting in a run of good performances, this week against the league leaders, who like Cheltenham last week seemed to be missing a couple of players (?). The defence looked solid, the forwards ran their nuts off all game, even the Legend made it back to defend in our 25 and there was good natured piss-taking support from the sideline. A 5-3 win with goals from Gary Roper(2), Tony Webster(2) and Richardson (Klinsman).A win in our re-arranged league match next week against Bath Buccs will put us right back in the mix.

2^nd XI: The seconds lost 5-0 at Bath University. Ger Openshaw said the Uni were a very impressive side and well worth their win. They looked a better side than Devizes last year. This a good game to play in the seconds gave everything but came second to a quality side. Duncan Armsby's two part report: Part 1: We thought we were ready! We thought we were prepared! We thought we could mix it with the league leaders! Bugger, it all went horribly wrong... Looking back, everything was going to plan, right up until the whistle blew... then we conceeded 2 sloppy goals in the first 4 minutes and we had to chase the game. By the end we'd barely had a shot on goal and had conceeded 5 disappointing goals. To seal our fate, Terry 'the Ginge' Watts lost his wee ginger head and spent some quality time in the 'sin-bin'. Poor old Terry, he's been great this year.To put it simply we played poorly. Our passing was weak and our touch poor. In every department we were second best. We worked hard and fought valiantly, but for all our endeavour, we just have to say well played to a very impressive Bath Uni side.Bugger! Never mind we had Sunday to look forward to...

2^nd XI: ...and so to Sunday's cup game. A wonderful chance to seek a cup run as we travelled to Devizes. Sadly, our weekend of despair continued. Making 4 changes from Saturday, we went down 2-1 to an extra-time golden goal. The full story though is a strange one... A 2nd team curry on Saturday night to drown our sorrows and bond as a team, seemed like a good idea at the time. It wasn't! The midnight curfew was abandoned as the boys headed to Pam Pams and at 1am we left town a stronger, closer team. Unfortunately, it meant we were not at our best for our match as tired bodies dragged themselves to Devizes.'Responsible' James Pearce-Smith hilariously threw up on-route whilst driving just as we overtook him, Ger Openshaw had woken up in his clothes and Pete Bullings arrived at half-time after getting stuck in London. We passed poorly, our 1st touch deserted us and we again had very few shots on goal. We had a shocker! To compound things, the umpiring was somewhat strange... I got headbutted in a tough challenge (unpunished), Tom Colquhoun received a crazy yellow for being hit in the face, Straun Wilkins received a 15 minute yellow for an innocuous challenge and I got a yellow for accidentally running into someone. We got a flick that wasn't then should have had another and both us, Devizes and their crowd were in disbelief at the aggressive umpiring which ruined a fairly pleasant, friendly match.

3^rd XI: Despite Tonka's grand efforts to arrange a game, players became too thin on the ground to fulfil the fixture.

Wanderers: The Wanderers played their league match against Somerset Gryphons that was abandoned in the fog last month. Steve Carter struck an awesome short very early on (although the subsequent shorts did not reach that standard again!) Ben Jones made it two with a powerful run and a well executed flick over the advancing keeper. It was Tom Taylor who caught the eye with his surging runs down the right, the defenders buying his over the top dummy every time! He had in several of the opening goals. Ian Hipwell set up number three with his cross shot neatly turned in by Alex Taylor. Ben Jones then showed how to completely miss hit/flick the ball. His minimal contact somehow confused the goalkeeper and the ball trickled in. Gareth Nichols added number 5 with a subtle reverse stick glance and John Ludley made it six at the half scoring with just 5 seconds left on the clock. Somerset reorganised in the second half and Westbury were unable to play the flowing hockey they had produced throughout the first half. The visitors scored a consolation goal from a rare defensive lapse. Ron Wheeler was called into action much more to keep out a number of shots. Steve Millman and Ian Hipwell scored to make it 8 for the Wanderers and wrap up the first half of the league season.

Warriors: The short drive to Bath to play Bath Buccs ended in defeat. Mark Colton scored the only goal. It must be sometime since the Warriors sufferered back to back defeats especially with big game against the Wizards next week.

Widgets: The Widgets faced 5 successive short corners in the opening minutes of what was to turn out to be an eventful match. The youngsters in the Robinson team played with good skills and dominated the start of the game. However, the tide turned. Austin Sheppard had some how managed to do his clowns impression when taking a hit in wide out on the right. He topped the ball, nudged it with his size 11s and fell on his back side. The visitors were not amused by Austin's comedy routine. On his next visit to the same spot he hammered the ball across for Martin Palmer to slap home. A goal mouth melee at the home end saw some sloppy defending and a couple of feet in the D. Vigorous appeals for a stroke ended in a short being reversed to a hit to Westbury. A couple of the older heads on the Robs side wobbled and a yellow card was shown. Westbury then dominated up to half time and were denied a second goal by some good goalkeeping. Robs started the second half strongly and equalised. Their body language suggested that this was the impetus they needed to go on and win the game and Stuart Horn and his defenders had to work hard to keep them at bay. Westbury then managed to change gear and started creating their own chances. Robs received a second yellow and it was at this point with time running out that Paul Pritchard struck from a misdirected short corner to win the game. Will Enderby brought his solid tackling to the midfield, Austin had a strong game and Will Holmes played with skill down the right. This win almost took the Widgets off the bottom of the table but OBs beat S Glos.

Westbury & United Banks HC: Results for Saturday 3/12/05
Team	Opponents		League	Scr	Scorers
1^st XI	v Cheltenham	H	Premier 2	3-1	Frost J 2 Goodman
2^nd XI	v Cheltenham II	A	North Div 2	3-1	Pearce-Smith Small Moon
3^rd XI	v O Bristolians II	H	Br & NW Som Div 1	3-3	Bell Coates Evans
Wanderers	v W Glos IV	A	Br & NW Som Div2	1-3	Haynes
Wizards	v Weston III	A	Br & NW Som Div 3	8-2	Christopher 2 Rickard 2 Crofts 2 Farrell Ogilvie
Warriors	v Firebrands VI	H	Br & NW Som Div 3	2-4	Harvey Brown
Widgets	v S Glos III	A	friendly	2-3	Thomas Millman C
1st XI	v Derwent	A	cup	2-1	Webster Richardson
Match comments
1^st XI: The first team had a good win against Cheltenham who were lying 2nd in the table before this match. Phil Meakin wrote: A 3-1 win (Cheltenham claimed to be missing 6 first teamers) with goals from James Frost (2) and James Goodman and probably our best performance so far this season. At least this might make the long trip to Derbyshire for our HA Trophy match on Sunday slightly more bearable.
1st XI: Phil Meakin reports: As Tony "Legend" Webster always says, "away games shouldn't be played if the travel time is longer than the time on the pitch". Which makes Redmaids school a long away trip for Tony. James Frost kindly offered Terry the chance to take his place in the firsts by dropping out at 8.15 Sunday morning. James Pearce-Smith and Tony were well prepared, packed lunches, warm clothes, gloves with string through the arms and bottoms wiped.The game...mostly shoddy with patches of great hockey and plenty of discussion points. Paul Mason gets a yellow for a 50-50, Neil Richardson a yellow for, in his words "asking a question" and goals from the Webster and Richardson helped us to a 2-1 win.Thanks to Chris Poulsom and Dave Harris for driving, Terry for stepping in last minute and Miriam, Netherlands for winning the best High Street Honey award (January to June 2006).
2^nd XI: Duncan Armsby reports: A solid 3-1 win over Cheltenham saw us maintain our winning form and stay within touching distance of Bath Uni. A mixed 1st half performance saw us take a 2 goal lead with neat finishes from man-of-the-match James Pearce-Smith and from Ian Small (performing well on debut). Due to Clint Bryer going down sick with tonsilitus, Andy Pound stepped into our goal and performed admirably - even managing to pull off the greatest reaction save we'd all ever seen, during a tight 1st half. Some slack defending gave Cheltenham hope, but a classy 2nd-half display saw us control the game and extend our lead with a short corner strike from Neil Moon. With all our 2nd half pressure, we probably deserved a fourth goal to round off the win... ask Terry why we didn't get it!
3^rd XI: Steve Millman wrote: Physical game in which the 3's could not match OB's determination. Chris Bell scored a good individual goal to equalise their opener and Nick Coates scored from a muffed short corner. Actually we muffed a few short corners! A bit of variation might not go amiss? They levelled following OUR short just before half time. The second half was poor and we found ourselves behind again. It could have been worse but for some good stops by Ben Jones who stood in as keeper late on. Going forward we rarely put many passes together, the exception being our 3rd goal which Nick Evans bagged from close in after Bell & Millman had exchanged passes down the left.There just remained time for a couple of comedy fluffs. Firstly Millman missed his shot completely following a short corner slip. Then Evans, after stuffing the keeper with his miss hit shot, contrived to dance with Jon Jarvis as they neglected to put the ball in the empty net. Quite humourous but for the fact we dropped two points.
Wanderers: The Wanderer's brilliant winning run came to an end at 26 league games in a row. A 3-1 defeat to local rivals W Glos puts a small dent in a second championship. No doubt the Wanderers will bounce back with another long winning run.
Wizards: The Wizards confrimed their place at second in the division with a big win at Weston. Alan Christopher, Geoff Rickard and Mark Crofts bagged two each and Pete Farrell and the skipper completed the scoring. If the Wizards can maintain the form they have shown they can finish runners up at the end of the season. If Firebrands slip up the Wizards are well positioned to close the gap on them.
Warriors: The warriors lost their top of the table clash with Firebrands by 4 goals to 2.
Widgets: The Widgets lost a second game to S Glos with Pete Thomas and Chris Millman scoring in a 3-2 defeat.