Match Reports (Previous Seasons)

25th March 2017

Ladies 1s

L1s beat undefeated, promoted East London 3-2, that is all!

Men’s 1s

L3-1

Ladies 2s

L2s WON!!!!! WE WON!!!!!!!! WE ACTUALLY WON!!!!!!!!! We played awesome hockey spurred on by a superb cheerleading team on the side-line (thanks L1s) and Lydia Hale scored that all important goal!! Lydia also got MOM for the goal and for trying to head the ball away from the opposition (hope you’re ok). Well done team!! We did it!!!

Men’s 2s

L4-0

Ladies 3s

Ladies 3’s were away at East London today. We bamboozled, we kerfuffled and worked our little legs off. Apparently the score was repeatedly 0-0 through the match (according to the oppo) so we’ll go with that score line huh ladies?!

Despite our best efforts, East London were quicker and had tactics gasp emoticon:-o ?! They put a few (OK 6) past us in the first half, but in the second we came back fighting and they only managed to get 3 more in. We held them below double figures with a final score of 9-0, not too shoddy considering they are top if the league by a mile.

Yet again we were told we were a nice team to play, they wrote it on their blackboard and everything

Thanks for a fab season ladies, onwards and upwards to next season.

Men’s 3s

The men’s 3s were away to Harlow today knowing that a win would put us in a good position to stay up. Unfortunately it wasn’t going to be our day and we lost 5-3.

The goal scorers were myself x2 and uni lad James Price.

Highlights included Zain turning up just before half time and David bagging a yellow card in the last 5 minutes for the softest shoulder barge in the history of the game.

MOM – still open to suggestions

POP – David/Zain

We move on to our last game of the season knowing we need to win to guarantee we stay in the league!

Ladies 4s

L4s played at home against Old Loughtonians L5s.

We were hungry for a win especially after beating them away earlier in the season but it wasn’t to be.

To say they had a lot of chances on goal would be an understatement, thankfully they only scored one of them. That being said quite a lot of the play was in their half of the pitch (their chances were just break aways that slipped through our mid field) and we got into their D quite a few times but just didn’t manage to finish. Final score WFHC 0-1 Old Loughtonians.

One more game left to play, hoping to finish on the high of a win, come on forest, we’ve got this!

Special thank you to the side-line Cheerleaders. You were awesome!

Men’s 4s

Match Report

Fixture: WFHC M4s vs Plashet (5th top vs runaway winners)

Pushback: 3.30pm

Venue: Lee Valley Hockey (and Tennis) Centre

Weather: V Good

Fact of the day: The founder of Plashet HC, Manmohan Singh Panesar, migrated from Kenya and founded the club in the 1980s at Plashet Park, East Ham. It is unclear whether he migrated to the UK in order to set up Plashet HC.

Plashet as most will be aware, are going about their usual business of tearing up every league and every team on their rise back through the leagues.

Missing top goal scorer, top German, vice-captain, Duracell powered midfielder and two of the three Bens, whilst relying on 3 players who had played games already, the 4s went out with jovial pessimism. Big thanks to Horace Keating, Immy and Joe Russo for doubling up.

Forest’s pessimism was clearly misplaced – a first half that was expected to be a rout drew to a close with Forest looking like peak ’15-16 Leicester. Not only had they been defensively strong they had created the more clear cut opportunities – including a Joe miss from close range.

However, 30 seconds from time Plashet hit us with a sucker punch – a goal out of nothing that moved so fast I didn’t see it until it was in the back of the net. 1-0.

In the second half Horace had joy down the Plashet left and this led to a breakthrough, he squared it to Nad who tucked it in from a few millimetres out.

Again great work from Immy and Joe led to a slightly more difficult chance for Joe – which of course he took.

So 2-1 up half way through the second half and although an equaliser always looked on the cards, it stayed this way for some time.

Always dangerous from shorts Plashet tied the game from a particularly tricky one. A few excellent saves from martin and with seconds to go it was 2-2 with a Plashet hit just outside the D. This hit a foot inside the D *cough* think the hit went straight in *cough*. They took a short, dummied a few times and buried it. Crushing.

It really was an incredibly strong battling performance which M4s (and guests) can be proud of, the intensity was typified by Sami who, after Plashet lacked dignity in victory, attempted to battle the entire opposition team.

MOTM

Impressive hockey against undoubtedly the best dribbler we’ve faced this season, plus even better fighting spirit meant Samir Akram got himself MOTM.

Men’s 5s

The Men’s 5’s made the early trip to sunny Chelmsford this morning for a 10.00 pushback still having a mathematical chance of staying up.

Chelmsford 5’s were top of the league, already promoted and needed one further point from their remaining game to be crowned Champions. Could the 5’s get the desired result that would give us a fighting chance for our remaining re-arranged game next week………?

In a word, No!

The 5’s played some great hockey again today and when moving the ball wide and around the back we did manage to create some half chances but to be fair to Chelmsford they were the better side and had a bit too much for the 5’s today.

We lost 5-0 and although it isn’t yet stated on the league pages, I think that has sadly relegated us.

A big thanks to Matt, Euan, Alastair and Irfan who stepped up from the Otters today and all played very well.

Whilst it’s easy to be magnanimous in victory, the Chelmsford coach made a point after the game that he thought we had played some great hockey, had pushed his side all the way and highlighted Andrew Falks performance for us in midfield. Well done Andrew.

On to our last game of the season next week with our heads held high.

Steve Hare