A ROUGH DAY AT COURT

Match report by Rob Hughes.

Without our normal warm up BOE started off the game a bit sluggish. An awful misplaced pass across the ‘D’ in the first few mins resulted in a Gore court player having an uncontested shot at goal which he put away. One nil down at very beginning of a match is not an easy place to try and gain a victory.

To make matters worse 5 mins later and a mixture of indiscipline following some odd and harsh umpiring decisions saw BOE down to 9 men!!! A perceived great tackle from Michael Lawrence saw him receive a straight a yellow instead. Not sure if it was for the tackle or the fact that he argued that it was a fair tackle. Player/Coach Sam Djavit intervened and asked the other umpire to help his colleague out which also resulted in a straight yellow for him (Not one green card had been handed out previously for any chat or anything so the decisions seemed unnecessarily harsh and officious.

These decisions put paid to the game for BOE as Gore Court took advantage of the numeric supremacy and went on the attack. After a base line run by their forward they slotted in another goal and the BOE heads began to drop.

A few minutes later BOE felt hard done by another crucial decision. A Gore Court player attempted a wild & strong hit inside the ‘D’ which Tom Archer had to jump out of the way to avoid a certain stick in the face. The Umpire waived play on and the grateful Gore Court forward dispatched a reverse stick hit into the goal. The Umpire claimed the wild swing was ‘NOT DANGEROUS’. A viewpoint and decision hotly contested by BOE.

3-0 at half time and the team was under the cosh and not feeling very happy.

BOE were not playing that badly and making inroads into the Gore Court defence but they allowed further umpiring decisions to unsettle them and were getting more than a bit wound up.

Gore Court looked for errors and scored two soft and preventable goals from short corners saw them go 5 up . BOE GK and defence would agree that these should've been stopped. Nathan Bullens redeemed himself somewhat with a string of athletic saves including a terrific triple save from the Gore Court attackers.

There was one event in the second half when the RB of BOE Rob Hughes decided after he was beaten by an attacker to rugby tackle the Gore court player to the ground. (It was a tackle that if Stuart Lancaster was watching he would have praised him for. I believe that the player is hoping that news of such a great tackle will somehow reach the England Manager and that he will pick up the phone and call him to congratulate him on such a wonderful tackle). Not.

DOD – Undecided it will either be Sam Djavit for a great assist for Gore Court's first goal or Rob Hughes for a great tackle.
MOM – Undecided but I would give it to Rob for such a wonderful tackle.

Big game next week with a trip to Old Bordenians.