Match: Mens Masters 2s

03 May Match: Mens Masters 2s

After opening our season with a resounding defeat to Mac Uni, it was always a concern as to what this year was going to be like. Fortunately though, the men in Blue and Gold got themselves organised, focused and went the next four games undefeated to sit in second spot on the table.

The Sydney Uni Men gathered together on another moist night, to do battle with the men in teal from Broadway TAFE. In typical Masters fashion, injuries and unavailability limited us to the bare 11 players, so we knew we were in for a physically draining night.

The match didn’t begin well for us as numerous attacking chances kept going just wide. Promising attacking raid after promising attacking raid resulting in no outcome and the score line refused to change.

UTS were however given a dubious penalty corner from a text book tackle (maybe from the Glebe Hockey Text book Circa 1960) from Sniffer outside the circle. Their first few attempts at goal were successfully parried but unfortunately Nappy decided that perhaps they should have another, so proceeded to give their winger another chance, and he did not squander his opportunity. 0-1 down.

More Syd Uni attacking raids saw the ball pass harmlessly across open goal faces, after more open goal faces and all of our first half pressure, just wasn’t turning into points. Our intensity dropped and we allowed UTS a passage of 5 minutes where they dominated play and unfortunately another penalty corner resulted in a stroke and UTS extended their lead to 0-2 at halftime.

The half time chat focused on winning our contested possessions and dominating our opposition. We knew we were the better team and were more than capable of running over the top of these guys.

UTS were buoyed by having some of their Sydney Masters Reps playing for them, so much so that the President of the Association also forgot his role as the umpire and went off on a tangent and became a cheer leader. Syd Uni just had to take him out of the game and a great individual run from Reg saw a clinical reverse “Tomma” open our scoring. 1-2

The tide began to turn and our first half performance had obviously taken a physical toll on the opposition as they were running out of legs. We couldn’t buy a penalty in our attacking half and even UTS were getting embarrassed about some of the decisions, so much so that they were even arguing (to no avail) that the hit should be awarded to Syd Uni….

We lost Tugga for a few minutes for using his stick to cleanly tackle an opponent, but a second goal from Reg, tied up the scores. 2-2

There was blood in the water and the boys in Blue and Gold knew the win was on the cards. Still no Penalty corners could be worked, hits were either “just outside”, “you had advantage”, “it’s from where it became dangerous” or something else to deny our chances but with 5 minutes on the clock our tame “Saffa” Greg Bawden, doing his best work on his knees, somehow managed to put one under (or through) the keeper to give us the lead. 3-2

UTS came at us hard for the final few minutes, but without the assistance in attack that they enjoyed in the first half, the Syd Uni boys managed to hold on for a memorable victory over the Broadway TAFE and extend our winning streak for another week.

Until next time.

Sniffer