With apologies to any sportsmen who may be viewing this blog post for the rather shocking image above. It is your truly following the first hockey match that I had played for almost 12 months, having gone into semi retirement following the conclusion of the 2009 season. I have been intending to make a gentle return to the hockey scene for some time. The match started at midday today in order to be over by the time of the Wales - Scotland Six Nations International.
I should have been more suspicious and asked more questions ahead of saying yes to playing - one question would have been, do we have a full team? The answer would have been well hopefully! We actually began with 8 players against the 11 man Swansea University side, having to take one player off to umpire. We actually offered the opposition a 5-0 walkover and 3 league points, however they preferred to play the game.To say that we were apprehensive in defence would be an understatement as the table topping team of young students took aggressively to the pitch as you will see above they are runaway leaders of the division by 10 points.
The game actually became an even tussle when we went to 9 players after 15 minutes and the final result:
Abergavenny A - 0 Swansea Unviersity B - 2 ( 1 goal scored in each half!!!)
As you can see from the picture taken following the game the rather overweight Abergavenny centre back did not look too tired at the end of the game, thanks to the commitment of the Abergavenny youth players - thank goodness for 17 years old legs!!!!
More next week........ Mmmm we will see, I did enjoy myself though, I have missed life on the pitch.
The next picture today I suspect was taken in the late 1980's ( the photo is black and white, plus the game was on a grass pitch!!!!) and shows a somewhat younger and slimmer me front left when I was actually a right winger.... oh! happy days.
The shot above was taken I believe at a mixed game in the 1990's and contains some long term Abergavenny Hockey members ( Trevor Scott back left, Adil Gatrad back right, Pat Harrison back third from left, Kevin Phillips front left, Nigel Sanchez to the left of me) - myself with novelty facial hair!!! - I know many of the other names however does anyone else recognise themselves?
Brilliant. Was wondering though why the other team didn't offer up an umpire seeing there was more of them than there were of you.
ReplyDeleteWhat a charming pikky Mr H and I do admire your enthusiasm. What has happened to all the snow?
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