15th Sept 2007 - The Excitement of the Cup

We were on our travels again, this time to Winchester to play Grace. Due to a limited amount of funds we decided to forego the traditional overnight stay in a hotel and team breakfast, but we did mange to keep that old cup tradition of a special ‘it’s a knockout’ ,where guys run around falling over and making prats of themselves. Unfortunately we managed to do this during the game rather than before!

The team line up was greatly changed from the previous week Andy M was away at a wedding ( apparently taking notes). Sunny, our resent summer signing, realised how challenging playing for Hedge End can be and pulled out because of an ankle injury. Dave was supposedly moving house and Tim had travelled up to Sunderland to watch his beloved Reading (and we thought we had a bad day!), So we welcomed 3 new players, proving that the squad rotation is alive and well... But a late withdrawal from our globe trotting star left back left us with just 12. This meant that Josh went into centre midfield and Rob, making his first appearance of the season, volunteered (ok was press ganged) into wearing that special multi coloured shirt,  and Callum went to left back.

Keith and Bernard came-up with a cunning plan of wearing our new black kit,  in the hope that we could use the referee as a twelve man, but he got wise of this and came out in a bright white shirt!

The game started at a very fast pace with a couple of early chances being squandered by Grace and a golden opportunity by Matt  ( now already living off past glories) . By the fifteenth minute Josh, obviously finding the responsibility of trying to fill-in for Andy M's boots too difficult, faked an injury and limped off for the rest of the half. This unsettled the team and only heroic goalkeeping from Rob, kept us in the game. All was going well into five minutes before time when a mistake by the goalkeeper and an excellent strike by their captain meant that we came in 3 nil down.

An influential team talk by Keith was totally ignored by everyone and a few minor positional changes with Bernard going in goal and Keith dropping back to centre-half wasn’t, if honest, going to change anything. An early strike by Grace set the tone for the next  twenty minutes. The midfield slowly evaporated like a puddle on a hot summer’s day and with both Callum and Josh joining the forward line it meant that the defence was now facing a wave of attacks. Due to a lack of Midfield Hedge End resorted to the ‘long ball game’. The ever increasing forward-line was being well sourced by Ben, Mike and James and we were starting to create a few chances. Grace continued to create chances for themselves and after two more goals the third choice goalkeeper was handed the gloves, as Bernard was worried about getting a back strain from retrieving balls from an empty net. 

Grace continued to ‘pepper’ the goal but some blinding goalkeeping (using face as well as his feet) and a ‘Dave like miss’ from their player ( ball crossed into the six yard box with not a defender or goalkeeper in sight, player managed to balloon the ball over the bar from two yards). At least we were making an impression on at least one of their players. Still we battled. Unfortunately Keith’s true goalkeeping skills suddenly turned-up and he now resembled Coco the Clown. Amongst all the mayhem, Hedge end did manage to score. Josh, totally out of position, got a lucky break and slotted it past their sleeping keeper. Spurred on by this piece of good fortune Hedge End started to play some neat football and almost looked like scoring again ( maybe not), obviously this worried Grace and that forced them to leave their main striker on just in case we pulled another 8 back!

Further details about goals conceded and misses would just depress the reporter too much so I’ll leave it to the bare facts that we lost 9-1.

Verdict: Considering the way the game went, I was impressed with the way hedge End continued to battle and the fact that the defence never stopped running and the forward line never started  - additional reporting by editor in the vain effort of getting his place back in the forward line for the next game. Special mention should go to Ben Powis who had a great game at right back and Mike for also having a good game (but more for bringing his son with him!)