Men’s M1W v Yarra Valley (R5)
The Sopranos faced the daunting task of a game without 4 of our usual forwards – Charlie Mac, Hillsy, Cleave & Barney all being called elsewhere for the week. Apparently it was none of their birthdays.
However the task was taken up with pride by replacements Jake Thompson, Bill Allen & Tim Watts.
Ian Botham is well known for wearing new cricket pads to bed to wear them in. This was not seen as necessary for the 6ths speed machine Patrick Nicholls (Paddy). 45 minutes before the start of the game, a brand new pair of Dita shoes emerged from Paddy’s bag, still with the tissue paper wrapping and price tag attached. The white stripes were blinding in the sunlight and the new grip made Paddy’s usual lightning change of direction something to behold. The result – a lazy bag of four goals.
Tadpoling has been illegal in Victoria for 10 years leading bored school kids to the more dangerous pastime of chroming. The reason for this ban is the dwindling populations of frogs in our waterways. It seems a form of human tadpoling is rife within the Yarra Valley hockey club as they struggled to field a metro 1 side to face the Sopranos.
However, with an undermanned side, Yarra managed to score the opener in what can only be described as a lazy opening 10 minutes from the home team. A few timely & bone cutting comments from Richard “iceman” Clancy on the wing steadied the ship and Kew rebounded with three unanswered goals to half time.
The feeling at the break was of both relief at the score line and frustration at our limited play book. Some choice ‘back to basics’ hockey was required which was brilliantly communicated (somewhat violently) by our captain Lachy- with an attempted hijack from Drew. With consolidate, relax and switch being the operative words, Kew indeed went back to basics with a second half score line of 5-1.
The final 8-2 score line unfortunately did not reflect the feeling that we could have and should have done better as a team.
Ben “The Chief” Hartungs idea of miming the club song was considered yet the crowd of 5 revved us up enough to blurt out a 50% effort.
Final score 8-2
Goals
Jake Thompson – 1 Goal
Pat Nicholls – 4 Goals
Tim Watts – 3 goals
