Won 3-1
Scorers: Barry Thomas (3)
MoM: Barry Thomas
DoD: not awarded
With thanks to team sponsor MFri
A must win game against bottom-placed Gillingham so no excuses – all Friars had behaved like monks the night before! The match started brightly as they attacked the visitors goal and despite a sitter being missed the pressure told. After 15 minutes a lovely pass from John Aiken to Barry Thomas gave the home team the lead. Tight coordination in defence meant that the younger & faster Gillingham team’s attacks were countered. Will Cook playing right mid showed a clean pair of heels and put in a huge amount of work all over the field! Another goal arrived with Barry getting a bit of stick on it. Gillingham pushed hard but a two nil score line at halftime set the Friars up nicely for a rousing talk from Trigger.
So rousing was it that within literally 19 seconds of the get-go Barry T went on a solo run of great skill and a touch of show-boating for the massed ranks of spectators & scored for his hat-trick – trebles all round folks! Thereafter Friars somewhat sat on this lead and as you do when you sit down conceded a well taken goal by Gillingham. Soon after one of the rocks – Cllr Ricketts (the other being Sir Geoffrey) came off with a “hamstring tweak” (his words) though possibly this was because he encroached into the opposition half and thus unknown nose bleed territory. This did allow (struggling on the connection here-ed) a flurry of Friars penalty corners all of which came to nothing.
Apart from Will Cook’s non stop running there were notable performances from Guy Dowling easing himself back into hockey, Dr Jolyon accepting the reality of anno domini and Moose Hurlow performing well in front of his wife, maybe indeed even for his wife, who was making a rare appearance!
When even Trigger said he was a “somewhat bored” at the lack of activity you know the Friars had had it slightly easy (for once) and the comfortable score line of 3-1 at the end gave them 3 valuable points and a reminder to Barry T to bring his wallet next week for his hatrick jug.
Squad: John Aikin, Will Cook, Guy Dowling, Jamie Harris, Geordie Hayward, Brian Hurlow, Tony Jones (C), Greg Lound, Dr Jolyon Miles, Sir Geoffrey Philpott, Cllr Alex Ricketts, Barry Thomas, Simon Triggs (GK),
