Mens 1 vs Amersham & Chalfont 1s

Following a very successful first half of the season, and a sublime festive period where your Harpenden Men’s 1s were completely engaged in a fitness regime we headed into our first friendly in buoyant mood and collectively heavier from all the muscle we’d piled on.

We had the fortune of being able to field a full-strength side this weekend, complemented by a returning Dom and a guest appearance from Coach Reece. (With a Rees and Reece on the pitch, in order to avoid confusion for you dear reader I’ll refer to myself as Alpha-Rees). 

George and I arrived a little tardy, half-way through Beta-Reece’s pre-match pep talk. We were happily on our way down the M1, when we saw a rhinoceros flying on the back of an eagle over a windmill by the volcano near Hemel Hempstead. The eagle dropped the Rhino and we thought well, we’d better help the Rhino get back to Whipsnade really, so we piled it in the back of George’s Vauxhall Corsa and dropped it off. This cost us so much time and was the sole reason we were late and had nothing at all to do with needing to return to Harpenden for George’s pair of shin-pads. En-route we passed a speed camera and given this was a friendly game today, George saw an opportunity to pick up 3 points. Somewhat harshly thanks to this tardiness George started on the pitch whilst Alpha-Rees was benched, I guess it was my idea to help the Rhino off the volcano.

We weren’t even the latest player to turn up, Russell had already played 70minutes for the 4s in a father & son double act. Apparently Russ did a lot more than “be on the pitch” - scoring a hat trick no less.

During the warm up Dave announced how he was still in “bulking mode”, Andy is thankfully over his bout of covid, and we had much discussion over the various performances in the Harpenden panto - the dame, French Franc and the wolf were the agreed highlights. 

During the first half we had a short corner. We didn’t score it.

Half Time: Amersham and Chalfont 5 - 0 Harpenden.

During the second half we had two short corners. Dom unleashed the sonic boom on the first, we didn’t score the second.

Full Time: ACHC 9 - 1 Harpenden.

Not the result we were looking for, but we were certainly tested and if our preseason friendlies are anything to go by a tough loss in a friendly bares little resemblance to how we fare in the league.

MoM Andy King, alright letting in 9 goals is a collective effort but our Keeper made some great saves with the stick, foot and glove.

DoD defending a short corner can be a dangerous position. Skills decides to deflect a drag flick off his own shoulder into Dom. One injury is better than two Skills - wear it!

Champagne Moment: this is a new award, for a moment of the game which was particularly exquisite. Unfortunately I’m struggling to recall one from today, all I can come up with was Henry passing it directly off the pitch, nothing particularly “champagne” about that.

1s: Andy, Nick K, Beta-Reece, Alpha-Rees, Dom, Danny, Singer, Skills, Dave, Todd, Mark, Henry, George, Russ

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