Men’s 1st XI 1 – 3 Old Loughtonians
Last weekend’s enthralling encounter at fortress TD showcased a huge clash between Old Cranleighans and Old Loughtonians, it was a match that kept the healthy number of OC Ultras on the edge of their seats from start to finish.
Old Loughtonians drew first blood in the 23rd minute, and it wasn’t the prettiest of goals, but they all count. A bit of a miss-hit into the D, and a clinical tap-in, and just like that, it was 1-0. The Old Cranleighans defence caught napping and they were left with some work to do.
But credit to the home side, they responded well. Crafting some dangerous attacking play left and right they broke the Old Loughts defence with a clever aerial into the D and winning a short corner from some deft hands down the baseline by Heywood. As the clock ticked past the 35th minute, Old Cranleighans managed to pull one back with a beautifully executed in and out short corner routine. Roe was the man on the spot, left with acres of room to slot home and make it 1-1. The crowd at the Old Cranleighans must have loved that response. Younger members of the crowd were seen to be on their feet and punching the air with excitment, great to see the future for f the club enjoying the occasion!
However, Old Loughtonians weren’t content to rest on their laurels. In the 46th minute, they broke away and scored their second goal. The Doble pulled off a spectacular triple save, but the relentless pressure from Old Loughtonians forced the ball home eventually despite his heroic efforts in the pads, making it 2-1. The OC’s defence had their hands full, and despite their best efforts, they couldn’t keep Old Loughtonians at bay.
The drama didn’t end there. Old Cranleighans threw everything they had at Old Loughtonians in the second half with tactical changes shifting the formation to apply even more pressure, but luck wasn’t on the OC side. A brilliant move that freed up Heywood at the top of the circle resulted in a penalty flick that was narrowly missed by the post, keeping the score at 2-1. The miss proved costly as Old Loughtonians added insult to injury, scoring a third in the 66th minute with a mazy run that, let’s be honest, raised a few eyebrows. Dubiously, allowed to continue despite no attempt to stop the ball, Old Loughtonians secured the victory, leaving Old Cranleighans with a mountain to climb.
In the dying minutes, the OC’s gave it their all, winning a number of short corners, but they couldn’t replicate the success of the first half. And so, the final whistle blew, ending the match 3-1 in favor of Old Loughtonians. A valiant effort from Old Cranleighans, massive games coming up the next few weeks for the boys to stay safe from relegation 💪
MOM – Ben Tibble
Match Report – Ben Roe
Men’s 3s 3 – 1. Teddington 3s
Puritans 3 – 0 Reading
Another win to make it 6 out of 6 in 2024 against a very decent Reading team who were 6 points ahead of us and in second place.
This was comfortably our best team performance of the season, our paying homage to Greg’s looped tactical talk for the bulk of the 70 minutes.
Boosted by Howie available at the 11th hour by dint of The Hammies game being called off we were able to off set Rob L being over The Atlantic and Evo still waiting for the RAC in Billericay. An early goal from Knappy set up by the dominant Lee M in midfield gave us an ideal start although Finners kept us ahead with good saves when called to do so.
Lee set up Knappy for our second in the 37th minute to give us breathing space and whilst the expertly languid central defenders coped with all that was thrown at them they were able to distribute to Burlsey and man of the match Greg who were constant thorns to the Reading defence.
Greg made it 3-0 from a short corner with 15 minutes to go and although Reading forced a number of corners our defence was not breached. Millsy on his debut turned one round the post whilst Finners stood tall.
4 points off second with 4 games to go with second place in our sights.
A week off to give Evo time to reach TD on the 16th.
Golden glove Mike Finnegan
POM Greg Hutchins
Goals Knapp (2) Hutchins
Ladies 7s 1 – 4 Mitcham 1s
Ladies 7s were up against a tough Mitcham W1. With a challenging first match against them, they knew it was going to be a hard fought game. Confidence was high from the out set and determination led to some great hockey. The passes were accurate and the first half was full of possession and attack, looking for the simple pass. Mitcham did score two goals in the first half, but one of their strikes was so powerful, it was never going to be saved. Freya was the 7s goalkeeper, offered to play two matches, had already stormed L6s getting Pom, and was certainly keeping brilliantly, saving many goals. Half time was 2 – 0 and determination was certainly driving everyone to get back in the game. Formations and passes drove the ball up the pitch and within 10 minutes Sophia Carlino attacked the D, held her nerve by not striking straight at the keeper, passed the ball to Jane Taylor, who was ready and waiting to hit the ball into the goal, textbook! 7s rode high on this and kept battling for an equaliser. Defence had the skill to stop many a ball, driving it up out of danger to the strong mid line but unfortunately two more goals were scored, finishing on 2 – 4, a score that didn’t reflect the game, but all were delighted with a fantastic match!
It was a wet start to the Ladies 5s match against Barnes 6s at home. With a supportive gathering on the sidelines we were all set for our game. We started out slower than Barnes with them scoring their first goal in the first few minutes, this was a wake up call, and we soon bounced back to equalise with a goal from Poppy Protasiuk running into the D, side stepped into the goal.
With end to end action, we were totally in the game, with 3 further goals by Barnes (1 was off an OC stick, and 3 further goals by us, Evie Robinson, Carolina La Valle Caruso off a short corner and Jenny Ripley, with an assisted cross goal push pass by Poppy, we equalised the game at half time to 4-4, an amazing first half outcome.
The second half we felt the oppo increase the pressure with more action in our D, and unfortunately conceded a further 2 goals, 1 assisted by an OCs stick, we kept up the fight all the way to the end!
Well deserved POM to Poppy Protasiuk, and other mentions to Amanda Jones and Naysa Poonia.
Ladies 4s 3 – 0 Wimbeldon Scorpions
After a week off it was back to it for the L4’s. With only 12 on the team sheet we were ready for a good run, especially as the oppo are all under 18s!
With only five minutes to push back, they only had one umpire, but at the last minute the second umpire screeched onto the pitch on his bike. Neither had umpired before, not a reassuring start-it didn’t get much better throughout the game!
Our week off showed at the start of the match-we weren’t talking and often had more than one player going for the ball.
We slowly settled into the game, passing the ball well up the pitch with numerous opportunities within the D. 16 minutes in we were rewarded with our first goal. Colleen hit the ball towards the goal with Klara putting the ball away.
20minutes in & Coleen passed the ball again towards the goal, with Bernie, finishing off to score, our second goal!
We were definitely the stronger team, however just couldn’t convert all of our attempts on goal-frustrating!
Our defence stayed strong throughout the game, ensuring Wimbledon didn’t take too many shots at goal. Niamh had a cracking game in defence, always steady, and in the right place to mark Wimbledon’s attack.
Our third goal came in the second half-well done Bernie!
We lost Bella with a hit to her finger-ouch! With no subs it was all systems go from everyone!
Overall, it was a frustrating game! We were by no doubt the strongest team but just didn’t quite take advantage of the oppo having 10 players. A good win though!
Golden glove goes to Naysa for a clean sheet.
After a biblically (is this a word?) rainy morning the Ladies 2s travelled over to Barnes late on Saturday afternoon for the away leg against Barnes Ls4s. Honestly, I don’t know where they are/were in our league as I rely on my lovely teammates to fill me in on the league positions each week, but I do know we were really hungry for a win, goals and importantly for the 3 points! With that in mind we had a good warm up and got ready to go all out at push back. And that we did, it was a great aggressive attacking start from OCs and after some great linking play, Sophie had a fabulous run around a few defenders into the D and found herself 1:1 with the GK within the first 5(ish) minutes. Her mantra this week was ‘fire in the belly, ice in the head’ and boy did she deliver. Calm and collected, and just like Adam has been coaching us, she moved the GK out of position and slotted one in from the right post. Woop! BUT Barnes did not let us rest on our laurels and came back really hard. They were dangerous on the counter attack and won a corner a matter of minutes after our goal. Annoyingly a deflection from a (disputed!) raised shot was given as a goal to draw them back level. Game on. The next phase of the game we felt we dominated with some lovely connecting passes particularly up the right, from Liv at the back, through to Charlotte Heap who had the wind up her this week and did some fantastic runs up the line, really testing their defence. Nicky had a stormer in the mid-field intercepting like a demon, but we did end up making life a little hard for ourselves by a number of loose passes. Unfortunately, they caught the defence slightly on the back foot and managed to get another goal past an on-form Jasmine. Our heads could easily have gone down but proud of the team for digging deep and not giving up. Lily, Alice and Jess all worked really hard up front and before half-time again Sophie found herself 1:1 with the keeper and it was almost like a reply of her first goal. 2-2 going into half-time. Encouraging words from Molly with some key areas to improve and the second half was ours to loose. We were up in their half alot and won a corner. It was a text-book set piece and Alice and co, who from a 1-2 out to the right, slotted the ball in through the keepers legs! 3-2. But still couldn’t rest as they were back at us hard including a couple of hairy moments in our D. But all covered by our calm defensive line and Jasmine. In the last 15 minutes Lily got a reward for all her running by putting away our 4th. A great achievement on her 2s debut Well done Lily! The game finished 4-2 and a great confidence boost going into the last weeks of the season. Thanks to the parental support and of course to Molly for coming away to manage us, much appreciated.
MOM: Sophie N
Goal Scorers: 2x Sophie N; 1x Alice P; 1x Lily M
OCs 4s 3 – 1 OCs 5s,
We were all slightly nervous about this match, playing against our clubmates in the 5s. A derby is always a bit strange, turning friends into opposition, and this was a family affair too, with three mum and daughter pairs across the two teams(and each team having a husband umpiring!). We were therefore well aware they had some strong players, and definitely did not go into this being complacent.
And we were right to be nervous, because they came out strong and dominated in much of the first half. They didn’t manage to score though, mainly due to our stellar defence team of Roz, Paula, Lizzie and Tash, with goalie Michelle keeping them at bay. Then, about 20 minutes in, we managed to get a lovely textbook goal, nonchalantly chipped in by Colleen, following a beautiful cross by Poppy P.
However, not to be outdone by her daughter, before the end of the half, mum Nicola P in the 5s got a lovely goal of her own off the p-spot. And so the first half ended 1-1.
We came out in the second half pretty determined to up our game and, although it was end-to-end play, we soon generated a few chances. It wasn’t long before we managed to convert one, with another tidy little chip from Colleen off a lovely cross from Klara, following a fantastic run down the line by Ella. 2-1 up.
There was some great play from the midfield, particularly Niamh and Poppy B, deftly using some one-twos to get the ball up the pitch. Unfortunately, not long into the half, Poppy B got in a tangle with a defence stick and ended up hobbling off with an injured knee. Luckily we had a couple of subs.
And luckily Colleen was on fire! Another beautiful cross from Poppy P and there she was getting her stick on the end of it again! A carbon copy of the first goal. Great stuff.
The 5s had quite a few chances throughout the match, and so did we, but there were no more goals and it therefore ended with a 3-1 win to the 4s. It was a really close-fought match though, demonstrating that there is not much between the teams (and they are still very much our friends)!
Well done to Colleen for the hat trick and being the well-deserved POM.
Written by Zoe Jones
