Men's 4XI vs London Gamblers M2

Hello everyone,

A much happier entry this week, and a much needed fillip for our morale. Finding consistency has been hard for us this year, and putting together a run of games has been frustratingly beyond our grasp, but we have occasionally been able to put together a really decent performance here and there. This game was one most definitely of those occasions.

We had a very useful looking squad, conditions were good, and we knew what we had to do to get on top and control the game. Of course things are never as easy in real life - this league has incredible parity. There is very little difference between the sides at the top of the table and those at the bottom. A goal here, a bit of consistency there, a crappy umpire decision here, and a decent short corner routine over there. Of course over the season the stronger teams will naturally rise to the top, but over the course of seventy minutes it seems there’s really nothing to choose whether you’re playing the undefeated OCs or the winless Wayfarers. Every game is a proper fight where you have to dig deep. When we haven’t dug deep we’ve lost; where we have we’ve won. It’s as simple as that.

And this match required the same amount of grit and determination as any other. Gamblers were quick to close us down, and very fast on the break. It was one of those games where you could easily get pickpocketed. However, we started the game phenomenally, controlling play and possession, and we put together perhaps our best passages of play since week one or two, but we couldn’t quite translate all of that into real clear cut chances. We needed to be extra careful when they broke down the middle as they had pace and purpose. You could definitely see their game plan. As the home side, with the stronger personnel, our game plan was more patient, keeping the ball, building up slowly, and forcing pressure until something gave. It often nearly did.

However that plan was slightly torpedoed when Gamblers were awarded an iffy short corner which, after being bobbled on the edge of the D, resulted in a pretty spawny opening goal, though Spike’s legs. These things happen in hockey - it’s a relatively high scoring sport. The important thing is you don’t let it derail you; you don’t get desperate; you just carry on with the plan, and trust both in the process and in each other.

But obviously the most important thing is to get back on terms, so you can then go and control the game the way you originally planned to. At times we needed to be a bit more direct, and with a handful of seconds to go in the first half Jack got on the end of a lovely move to thieve another goal. It was a critical moment, exactly when we needed it to happen, and it changed the complexion of the game making for a very interesting second period.

Both teams came out of the blocks determined to wrest back control. We knocked some very pretty balls around and kept a high press as tight as we could. Gamblers tried to break when their very accurate jabs turned the ball over. The only real moment of danger came when their winger got behind our back three, Spike went to sweep but cannoned the ball into their winger’s stick. Nico did his best to hold the guy up, our screens got back on the line as Spike tried to recover, but the Gambler inexplicably went for a top corner goal of the season contender with the whole goal yawning. It was a let off, and one which we collectively decided to punish.

Fantastic work from the midfield, somewhat lacking in recent weeks, pinned Gamblers inside their half for most of the rest of the game. We hassled, harried and pressured all over the park, not letting them get a moment’s peace. We tracked, tackled and turned over with impressive consistency. We had a bunch of shorts, we controlled passes excellently, and kept a high tempo with plenty of mobility. Jack and Boydy played out of their skins in the wide areas, Rich and Dave were wrecking balls in the middle, Nico and Pringle cut swathes through the centre of the park like hot knives through bratwurst, and Gaz came with a fully turbo-charged battery this week. The guys up top held play up brilliantly, and you just knew Gamblers couldn’t resist that amount of pressure for long.

So it came as something of a reward and something of a relief when Boydy tonked in his very first league goal for the club, followed quicksmart by a moment of Morely Magic. 3-1 put the game beyond Gamblers, who were by then suffering from the same tiredness and desperation that we’ve been showing in the last ten minutes of games. We came close to making it a by-now-standard 4-1 win but we couldn’t quite find the angles. Nevertheless we saw out the game comfortably, controlling the ball till the final whistle, and capping a calm and disciplined victory against a Gamblers side you wouldn’t necessarily want to bet against.

Spike

Two areas for development - keep your legs closed and stay inside the #$%@ing D - aside, Spike cleared and called well. With little else to do apart from a couple of routine kicks and a little double save towards the end of the first half, it’s unlikely he’ll be this quiet for the remainder of the season, in every sense of the word.

Maj

Another brave and competent display from a guy who has deservedly claimed his place in a strong and stable defensive unit. Up to the task even against that GB track and field bloke they brought on, Maj offered space, time and a sensible outlet to relieve any pressure around our D. He even hit a couple of inch-perfect passes, prompting multiple players to double-take and rub their eyes. With a common sense rotation keeping him fresh but locked in, Maj produced a really decent performance with no bickering and no pointless pedantry. We have truly all entered the Upside Down.

Jonno

It’s getting hard to find superlatives to write about this guy, as we can all see we’re witnessing the birth of an Epsom legend in real time. With no real weaknesses in his game, he defended, passed, tracked and talked a top notch game. It’s no coincidence that he got a couple of mentions for MoM - we were very close to keeping our first clean sheet. Not as clean, one imagines, as Jonno’s freshly starched, pressed and newly febrezed bed sheets with their aroma of misty Alpine glade and luxurious Egyptian cotton softness, but pretty clean nonetheless.

Dunx

A proper 32-DD performance this week from the cheeky chappie who graduated from Warwick University four decades before Nico will. Dave is the anchor of our team, dragging oppo players along the seabed of misery, and righting us when we’re heading full steam towards an iceberg. His interplay is way above this level, along with his smarts, his confidence and his nose for finding a way through. In fact you wonder if his musculoskeletal system and levels of fitness weren’t that of a particularly careless Octogenarian who insists on going everywhere on roller skates, he would be playing many levels higher than us. So let’s give thanks for Dave’s gimpy glutes!

Nico

It’s not often you find Gold Orr in a division full of pig iron, but that’s what we’ve been able to covet these last few games. An inspired pairing with Dave, Nico once again looked like a lad who actually knows what he was doing. A lot of his work is off the ball - that’s why he’s always in the right place. And of course once he gets the ball - maybe by controlling a wild pass, intercepting a hapless Gambler, or picking an aerial like he’s done an internship at Del Monte - Nico is literally unstoppable. He unlocks midfields even when it looks like they’ve shut the door; he serves up little through balls to forwards like he’s handing out perfectly squidgy homebaked brownies at a works do; and he slices through defences like a man who knows his way round a Toby Carvery. Nico has been a fantastic role player for us this season and is quite possibly the nicest human to ever walk the planet, so I’m absolutely gutted to be losing him. Hockey’s loss is Midlands healthcare’s gain, for sure, and I accept that, but how on Earth do we fill this gap?

Pringle

A Swiss Army knife role for the Swiss Roll colonel in this match. Pringle was like a motorboat out there, ripping through waves of Gambler jellyfish, leaving confused players in his wake, and plotting a course to Victory Island regardless of how much petrol was left in the tank. Some heroic defending out wide, some shots on goal (!) and some impressive velocity in the centre of the pitch marked Pringle out as a solid contender for man of the match. His long passing was way more hit than miss, which is great to see, and his workrate eventually sunk HMS Gambler.

Davey Lee

It’s difficult to say which one of the Lees works the harder and puts their health and well-being on the line more. It’s like Godzilla v Mechagodzilla, so when they combine forces they become virtually unstoppable. Gamblers didn’t really know what to do against Dave when everything they tried just got intercepted - eventually they started going long, and much of the time that just meant hitting the ball 75 yards up the pitch to relative safety. He upped his game even more in the second half and slowly closed the net on the oppo. For a good fifteen minutes they couldn’t break out or string anything together, and much of that was down to our nuclear powered central midfielders.

Rich

And that includes Rich, who was on a mission from meet time to undo the gloom of last week and come back to make someone pay. And that’s not where the Clubber Lang analogy ends either. Apart from his punishing style of hockey, his relentlessness, and his victory-at-all-costs attitude, it turns out he has more in common with Rocky III’s Southside Slugger than we thought, getting embroiled in what you might loosely term ‘handbags’ with that utter helmet from the oppo. The umpire deducted points from both fighters, but their bloke didn’t fancy coming back out of his corner for Round 2, Ricky “The Hitman” Lee correctly predicting “pain”.

Jack

From streetfighting bruisers to high rollers in Cadillacs, Jack’s grace and precision gave us a contrasting but complementary option. Flawless in his positioning, peerless in his phase play, and shameless in his ability to steal goals, Jack “The Gentleman Thief” Allen was back to his tricks this week. We’re so much better with him in the line up I’m half contemplating locking him in the shipping container at OSL in between games. Jack gives us options, ball security, creativity and confidence, and those things were really the difference between us winning and us not taking advantage of good situations.

Boydy

But if you thought Jack had a good game, what about this fellow? Tom ‘The Jackal’ Boyd lives to hunt people down. Even if his first touch goes a bit bibbly, he doesn’t give up. He hassled Gamblers all day, and when we won the ball back he dominated the right side. Cutting in, beating men, hitting the D, he gave us exactly what we needed: a secure, creative and mobile outlet who could turn their terrible LB inside out. And of course the cherry on the cake was Tom’s first ever league goal for us, a moment which really chopped Gamblers down at the knees, and topped a fine performance from the Boydmaster 3000. Very much worthy of an MoM award but he lost out by half a vote. Next time TB!

Gaz

Imperious performance from Gunners Gazza who grew and grew as the game went on. Not everything came off in the first half but when things opened up, Gaz gave us a smart and energetic outlet up top. Any time Gamblers broke and we turned it over, Grandmaster Morely was there to pick up a long ball and instantly turn oppo pressure into Epsom pressure. This really pinned Gamblers back and allowed us to gradually take control of the game. Now back to fitness with a full complement of hamstrings, I feel sure that a mobile, confident and trademarkedly tricky Gaz will help fill the Mandy shaped hole up front and get us plenty of goals.

Ludders

Proper workout from his Luddship. Covering several acres of pitch, Ludders helped box the oppo in at 16s all game, giving us great field position and a chance to keep pressure on from start to finish. Pulling defenders around like a man with a particularly tasty sharing garlic bread who knows that his blind date is going nowhere, he tore the oppo to pieces until they looked absolutely gassed half way through the second half. But he didn’t just run, he dribbled out wide, kept the ball, moved it around, and had a couple of great chances to deflect in. Ludders made a proper nuisance of himself in this fixture, which is exactly what we needed with our high press, high tempo game plan.

Loz

Same can be said for the Black Country Ballerina himself. His work rate was off the scale, and he had the Gamblers defence all ends up when he wheeled round the back out wide. And that kind of pressure, where you don’t let the oppo out, but equally you don’t let them catch their breath when you turn the ball over, is the key to throttling away teams. They suffocate under the constant barrage, and eventually - all things being equal - your quality will prevail. We all know strikers love scoring, and Lozza might be frustrated with his tally right now, but if anything his contribution has been more vital: getting underneath defences using pace and skill, and putting the ball on a plate for Jack to steal is teamwork at its finest!

Neil

With a fast breaking, accurate tackling, and generally pretty useful opposition to contend with, we needed all the experience, hockey nous and calmness we could get. With the obvious candidates of Dave “Calmer” Farmer and Matt “Level Head” Oliver sadly being sidelined, we turned to Happsy. And what a bit of fortune that was. Neil gave us exactly what we needed: composure, sensible decision making, and a superb organisational attitude. Our 16s were the best I’ve ever seen, never coming back and nearly always resulting in a clean break into the oppo half; the marking was spot on even one-on-one against a front three; and some of the defending against some pretty competent advancing Gamblers was top stuff. Add all that together and you get 1) lots of requests to sign him up permanently, and 2) this week’s *Man of the Match* award. Congratulations, Neil!

So that was an enjoyable win against a decent side who, depending on who you ask, were quite a nice bunch of blokes or the biggest twunts known to man. Whatever, it’s another three points for us in a game which, had it been played four or five weeks ago, we might not have had the creativity or cojones to come back into. It definitely feels like a step forward. I would suggest we stay even calmer in the future, make some adjustments on the fly, and keep the standards we’ve set ourselves. If we do that there’s no reason why we can’t compete with anyone in this league with the players we’ve got. We just need it to click - like it did today.

Last game of the calendar year next week. Big one. Big chance the go into Christmas within the top of the pack. Get your availability up please. Also we have two or three spaces left in the quiz team for Saturday night. If you fancy spending a week reading an encyclopaedia, and then fancy spending an evening with me and a very drunk Tom Nickels, do sign up on Teamo. Pringle has betrayed us and joined a team of girls, so why not come and help us flush him and his treacherous female teammates down the proverbial khazi of trivia?

Spike