Won 2-1
Scorers: John Aikin, Mark Lister
MoM: Mike Barton
The last league game before the Christmas break and The Friars, sitting a bit too uncomfortably in 2nd slot in the League, obviously didn’t want to extend themselves too much – which they didn’t.
The first half was not a pretty sight, more like the Friars of old – missed passes, poor tackles, a bit of grumpiness and scratchiness. Mind you the opposition weren’t too special either. However John Aikin conquered his own gremlins and scored his first for 3 weeks which counts, for him, as a barren, infertile period of time – how many of us would be happy with a goal every 3 weeks?! Mind you his young son Arthur, unselfish as ever got himself into a superb scoring position only to generously pass to his dad who…………somehow didn’t score – just go for it next time Arthur! The second goal came from Sevenoaks at a penalty corner after a succession of lazy tackles from the Canterbury defence. Shortly before half time Mark Lister then pounced on the ball and with the help of 2 Sevenoaks defenders put Friars back in the lead.
With the score 2-1 at half-time and indeed for the rest of the game, the Friars played some attractive hockey with all departments performing well. The defence with Alex Ricketts and Mike Barton both providing ballast and power and Kevin G some deft picking of opposition sorties. In midfield John Ratcliffe and Jolyon Miles (who is certainly becoming a Friars permanent fixture in his slow almost reluctant rehabilitation back to Squires hockey) being a lot more dominant which resulted in young Arthur Aikin up front showing all his skills to good effect for the team. However all to no avail as the Friars were unable to slot any goals at all in the second half. Still a scraped out win is a win nonetheless.
On the spectator front it was nice to see Green & Green (that is Bob and Mike and not a firm of lawyers) coming out to support – many thanks to them. Indeed the umpire had to concentrate hard as their chat became very noticeable regarding the current England Pakistan Test. Apparently Green (M) is still suffering slightly from his gonads injury of a week ago and offered the statistical fact that in all his decades playing cricket he had remained unscathed in this part of his body but playing Friars was a different matter ….obviously. Showing how much good the Friars nursery does do Dan Ghent came to support also and managed a half of no doubt painful viewing!
Thanks to Twyman and Hayward who umpired without their mobility and visual impairments respectively being too much of a problem …… or so they thought!