HEATHENS MEET MAIDSTONE WALL

Heathens were away to Maidstone on a, thankfully, bright but chilly day. The low sun made umpiring and passing difficult at times.
In the first half the Heathens were the dominate team, for the most part. The new players that Maidstone had found after the 9-1 spanking back in October were nullified by solid defending from Tom, Feno, Danny and Tino. The Heathens started to create chances with Rhys up the right wing, Snatch with his back to goal shooting and Chris with a couple of wobble (hobble?) runs but weak shots. Finally a goal came through a pinpoint/fortuitous pass from Chris, dissecting two defenders to find Andy high in the D to slot in an acute angle goal.

Maidstone continued to struggle and resorted to flicking the ball out of defence every chance they got. This was delt with with sponge like qualities from Tino and Tom. However, Maidstone did manage a short corner or 2. One short began with an argument between Maidstone attackers that ended with a sending off of one of their players. Bizarre. The Heathens were still by far the better team and should of had a P-flick close to half time after Charlie was clumsily tackled with an open goal tap in.

In the second half the Heathens lost a little bit of urgency and composure on the ball. This allowed Maidstone to put more pressure on the Heathens. A few poor umpiring decisions followed one of which saw Danny have his hand stepped on but the hit went against him. Rob was keen to put things right. So much so that he forgot he was a Sub at one point and stopped the ball before it went off the pitch. Maidstone eventually got a short corner.The disguise of pace on the shot was too good for Sturge and Maidstone levelled the game.

The Heathens responded with some good breaks. Snatch tried to boost the urgency with a Viking like roar at one point. It seemed to help as Heathen got a short corner. Snatch had a lovely clean low strike that Chris could of deflected in if he had got himself close to the right hand post. Andy pointed this out. Rob tried to get another short corner by busting a gut up the right only to miss his attempted 'foot' and push the ball off the pitch.

The hockey finished end to end, with Tino and Danny making some great tackles and Snatch and Chris having a few wide shots.
A game the Heathens should have won but a draw wasn't too disappointing