AS ONE PROUD RECORD GOES, ANOTHER IS MAINTAINED

K Sports (Cobdown) Men's 2s 5 BEHC Highwaymen 1

Inevitably the team's record-equalling eight-match winning streak in all competitions came crashing to a halt at high-flying K Sports - unbeaten for over a year and heading for a certain Division 2 title - but it was an honourable defeat, where the hosts were made to work hard for the win.  Shorn of six regular starters (Rose and Robinson, Wickramasuriya, Bunker, Miller and Mitchell) a 4.00 pm away start in half-term week against the top dogs in the league might have seen many teams forfeit the result and stay at home, but not the dogged Highwaymen, who have never yet failed to honour a league assignment.  That they could still maintain this record was down to the great Club spirit shown by the likes of Jon Taylor, his son, Max Taylor, back-for-the-week-end student Ben Baker, and just-recovered-from-a-hernia-operation Rod Harrington, who all stepped up to the plate when needed.  And whilst it was extremely good news that the Highwaymen could call on nearly 160 years of experience waiting on the substitutes' bench, this had to be tempered by the fact that the 160 years total was shared between only two individual players.

The last time the team rocked up in Aylesford for a friendly against the same opponents in January 2019 they shipped 8 goals with a fairly strong starting XI, so the most recent visit represented an improvement of sorts.  The game started in predictable fashion with the home side on the front foot right from the off, and pinning the visitors in their own half with a full-court-press.  The Highwaymen kept a solid shape, however, rode their luck, and nearly had the audacity to take the lead courtesy of a fantastic fifty-metre run by the enterprising Max Taylor.  Only an acute shooting angle stopped an almost certain goal after he had rounded everybody in sight, including the keeper.  The home pressure eventually told, when, as ever, a really scrappy goal was conceded after so much valiant defending had kept the home team at bay.  Pat Gainey and Rod Harrington continued to work hard in midfield, snuffing out some of the danger at source, and linking up play whenever they could, but the fact that man-of-the-match Richard Cleall in defence saw more of the ball than anybody else showed the pattern of the game more eloquently than any computer statistics could have done.  As he has done all season, Ed Smyth covered every inch of ground and was another major factor in keeping the score down to 0-1 at the break.

Heads could have dropped when it was 0-2 four minutes into the second half, but far from it.  Instead of retreating into their shells, the Highwaymen pushed forward, and this time Max Taylor managed to pull one back after another great run and finish.  Briefly the visitors dared to dream, but the statistics eventually took their toll.  Thanks to two green cards and one yellow, the visitors spent 20% of the game a man down, and the penalty corner count (mostly merited) had reached a staggering 18 by the time the clock had got past the hour mark.  Add to this brave Phil Kinch's incapacitation for the last quarter of proceedings, and it is perhaps fortunate that only three more goals were conceded, although the men in white could have argued that their heroics under the circumstances deserved at worst a 1-3 scoreline, with keeper Rupert Greaves again stopping most of what came his way in terms of penalty corners, one-on-ones and reverse-stick tomahawks.

So was it worth it?  Absolutely!  The result was one goal better than the walkover would have been, the Highwaymen can still say they have never forfeited a game, and above all, they showed again that it is possible to be as proud and worthy in defeat, as it is in victory.  Once K Sports 2s are in a higher division more commensurate with their undoubted talents and with less "sympathetic" umpiring, they may well not be able to go a whole season undefeated.   The remaining teams in Division 2 are unlikely to miss them next season.

Next up for the Highwaymen after the top team comes a home fixture with tenth-placed Folkestone, who conceded a combined total of 21 goals in their two fixtures with K-Sports (gulp!)

Team:
Rupert Greaves (GK), Tim Walters, Phil Kinch, Richard Cleall, Stephen Gilbert, Jon Taylor, Max Taylor, Rod Harrington, Ed Smyth, Sammy Chana, Pat Gainey, Ben Baker and Tony D'Cruz.

Man-of-the-match:
Richard Cleall - not exactly underemployed, for the second week running he led the back-line with distinction and - alongside his fellow defenders - managed a great exercise in damage limitation.

Umpires:
Hats off to Paddy Ferguson for supplying the BEHC official in a Division 2 away fixture at 4.00 pm in the afternoon in February - he did a fine job.  It always seems like sour grapes to complain about the home umpire in a game where his interventions made no fundamental difference to the ultimate result, but merely perhaps to the margin.  On this occasion, however, he did make a bad call with a a yellow card, and looked a little thin-skinned for threatening another for the perceived heinous offence of "eye-rolling"!