Blueharts VII 3 - 1 Hertford VI

A largely veteran Hertford side faced the very young Blueharts development side for a fascinating contest of contrasting styles.

Blueharts’ stick skills and fast, lively short passing game allowed them to dominate possession and field position for long periods, without ever creating many scoring opportunities. Their three goals were all in fact disappointingly soft. After 20 minutes of ‘proper’ hockey, and 1 – 0 down, an increasingly tired Hertford team, further handicapped by the loss of Graham White to a nasty gash on the head, adopted the 7 – 0 - 3 formation that so many other sides have used successfully against us. Largely abandoning the middle of the field, where Blueharts just passed rings round us anyway, we relied on long balls up to Ian, Matt White and Daryl, well supported by some scintillating dribbles from Adam Sutherland, and by the end of the game had had more shots at goal than them, but sadly all just wide of the post or saved by their acrobatic young keeper. Only Andy Benson’s thundering shot mid-way through the second half got past him on a tight angle after a well worked move through their D.

In defence we kept numbers back and sticks on the ground, marked much better than the last two weeks, and despite the constant pressure rarely gave them a sight of the goal. We conceded only 1 short corner, which annoyingly gave them their second goal on the stroke of half time as a bobbling shot caught a Hertford foot on the line. Andy got a stick to the penalty flick but could only deflect it into the net.

Through the last quarter we looked an even bet for an equaliser as play flowed from end to end, but the final score rather harshly went against us with a couple of minutes to play.

Could easily have been very different – but that’s the beauty of the game!

Let’s hope for a better rub of the green next week.