13th Oct 2018 Mens 5th v City of York 9(Home) 6 - 3 win
With a couple of regulars out and Dave Tindall captaining in the absence of Rob Jackson a new look team took to the field against a team of mostly veterans of York 9ths. Ian Shutt and Jonathan Till dropped into the 5ths and their impact was noticeable. Matt Wood is relatively new to hockey but the lad can run and run and run and run all game so we played him just in front of the back 3 in the Johnny Roughton position. Despite York taking the leader after about 15 minutes it was actually Rhydding that played far the better hockey with wonderful moves down the right in particular with young Peter Benedikz, Ian Shutt and Tilly making the right channel starting line up.
York were just done for pace, enthusiasm and tempo. Rhydding would simply not let up and soon after Yorks first goal some great play down the right meant a cross came into Tindall who shot, took across goal, took a deflection off a defender and in. 1 � 1 Rhydding again continued to press and we were rewarded with Tilly scoring another 5 minute or so later and the game stayed at 2 � 1 at half time. We deserved to be more than 1 up but we just hadn�t quite taken our chances.
More of the same was the team talk at half time and Rhydding came out the far stronger. I forget the order of the goals but Tilly got another, Matt Wood got his first for the club with a lovely solo effort and Tindall got one from a cross and one from a bullet short corner. When claiming his hat trick Tindall praised his new Adidas hockey stick as the reason to his improved marksmanship.
We can�t praise the team enough though. Everyone worked very very hard and we played together as a team, no silly individual runs, just lots of hard passing to sticks and some great through balls. All of the youngsters excelled and played their best games I�ve seen them for the seniors so far. If we can continue to play with that fluidity and pace, then we should do well this season. York managed to get a couple back from short corner routines despite the best efforts of young keeper Josiah Wood who managed to play at the very last minute to sort out our keeper shortage.
Its very hard to say who should get man of the match so we�ll call it a team performance as everyone played the best I�ve seen them so far. Well done all lets keep it up for next week.