SOHC Men’s A 3 , ECVH 0

SOHC men’s second team maintained their unbeaten home record with a thoroughly dominant win over local rivals Exeter Culm Vale Hornets third team, a result which sees the team secure in a mid table position, writes Mark Moore.

Unusually the home team started off looking a little shaky and, for the first 10 minutes, it looked like the visitors might open up the scoring. Despite having more possession and moving the home team around the pitch, they never really made any inroads into the SOHC defence and it was more a case of SOHC being generous in their ball distribution ie repeatedly giving the ball away, that caused the unnecessary pressure.

However, it wasn’t long before the home side got back into their stride and, on 20 minutes, a searching ball into the opposition D from Anthony Dibble caused chaos and confusion. Andy Mapson, running a great angle in from the right wing, completely bamboozled Neale Frood in the ECVH goal and his defenders and an own goal resulted in SOHC taking a 1-0 lead.

Neither team conceded any penalty corners, although SOHC had the better opportunities. One such chance fell to Will Gallantree right on the stroke of half time, just when it seemed impossible to miss, the inevitable happened, although the young forward claimed he was the filling in a ECVH ‘sandwich’

SOHC made the second half their own, stepping up through the gears and maintaining a high cadence of play, continually threatening the visitors’ defence. From a well- worked right-sided attack and the resulting long corner, Graham Pidgeon took a smart chance from the edge of the D to bury the ball first time into the bottom corner of the goal.

A penetrating run along the left side baseline from Chris Bishop and a subsequent cross found Gallantree, who made amends for his earlier miss with a skilful piece of stick work to prod the ball home.

Finally the home team managed a penalty corner and should have at least found the target but spurned the opportunity to take a 4 - 0 lead.

At the other end of the pitch the SOHC defence kept a clean sheet.but also played the entire game without conceding any penalty corners.Once again the midfield of Andy Clemmans, Charlie Please, Paddy Geake, Jon Dutton, Anthony ‘hitman’ Dibble and Will Gallantree worked tirelessly and made the difference between the two sides, continually working back and hassling the visitors into errors.

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