FIVES IN LAST MINUTE THRILLER

With a solid and quick passing effort in the midfield, the fives tried to make goal scoring the aim, with aggressive play by the forwards. Shortly in, there was a series of short corners, and Super VC Toby Partridge banged it into the goal. Naturally Toby claimed that "the backboard rippled". But it didn't.

After starting so well, the team lost focus, holding on to the ball too long, and made shoddy passes where an obvious pass should have been obvious. Maidstone started to gain on us as we headed into half time. 1-0.

And Maidstone equalised.

Ten minutes in, Charlie made a lovely cross to Max who knocked it straight in. Minutes later a superb back-stick flick towards goal from Max unfortunately only just hit the cross bar, but would have been goal of the century if an earthquake shook the goal.

With just over ten minutes to go, Maidstone scored with a brilliant diving deflection. 2-2. After drawing with Sevenoaks last week, a draw to Maidstone would be downright awful and it looked like victory was lost. Our hearts dropped, some stopped.

But we might say that was all part of the plan. Because everyone was determined to pull off the plan with a spectacular final ten minutes of hockey, just for the spectators. What's more, to keep the tension high, best to leave it to the final few minutes.

So after a late summer burst of trips to Oktoberfest, beaches in Malaysia and fine arts on Saturday, in goes Max, receives a cross on a 40 degree angle from the 25 line, and deflects into goal. And the carnival was in town, with 3 mins left. Not to be outdone, with one minute to go, Charlie one-upped Max, running into the D for a dramatic back stick deflection, launched high into the goal. And the game was ours, just like we had planned to play it from the beginning.

But more seriously, there was an epic mess up with a bad substitution into centre-mid at about 20 min into the second half. Publishable words can't describe it. The match turned, and they scored a goal in this time, which was probably only 5 mins. Selection and player placement is brutal, and this proves why. But the stand-in captain (moi) takes responsibility for it as the bench should have been run more tightly.

Today we saw that our strikers struck. The aim was to set an objective for the midfield - to keep possession until around about the 25 line, and bring it to strikers, rather than rely on some kind of flutter on the meadow. We are very thankful for the talent and composure of Max vom Kolke and Charlie Nelson in the final 3 minutes. Man of the Match to Max, closely followed in votes by Charlie. Thanks to Senaka and Antony Sturgess for umpiring (and as far as I know, we owe you a drink for umpiring for us).

Well done to all.