Crostyx Hockey Club

Having been easily dispatched in the first round of the England Hockey Over 40's cup, Crostyx vets tried again in the plate competition. With players from various sides within the club early cohesion was always going to be difficult. And so it proved when St Neots controlled the game and gave Crostyx the run around, from one of their many attacks the ball broke lose in the D where their centre forward hammered it in to the corner giving Chris Tilley no chance. Desperate defending kept the score to a 1-0 deficit at half term.

At this point the Crostyx captain totally changed the formation to try and compete in midfield and went for the fresh legs of Graham May and Peter Hanmer from the large pool of substitutes. This definitely worked as all of a sudden Crostyx were in the ascendancy and moving the ball around well. After good work by Nick Gillett and Mike Bond the ball was squared to Guy Peddy form the left hand side who finished clinically from a foot out!! It was now all one way traffic and constant pressure created a short corner that was crashed in to the corner of the goal by Nick Gillett to give Crostyx a 2-1 lead.

Surely Crostyx could now see the game out, unfortunately NOT as a soft short corner was given away just as the the final whistle went. This meant that St Neots had to score from the last play of the game to level the match. This they did to send the game to penalty strokes.

Up stepped Russell Turner to roll back the years and easily put the first of five strokes away. The first St Neots stroke was saved by a rampant Chris Tilley,who then proceeded to save all of the next three strokes resulting in a 2-0 stroke win after Mike Bond converted his twice taken effort.

Bring on West Herts who promise to be a stern test on the 5th Feb.