This game before the Christmas break saw the Old Loughtonians Mens 1s make the journey North to City of Peterborough.

 

The home side started the better of the two teams clearly used to a tricky surface.  Fred Whitfield’s wizardry between the posts was required early on to hold the locals at bay with another fine display of goalkeeping. Loughts looked to be the better team on the break, however early forays into the opposition 25 remained unconverted. The home sides numerous chances eventually resulted in an outcome when an arial ball thrown deep into the Loughts half found its way to a loose Peterborough forward who put it away with relish.

 

The boys in Purple and White fought back and through their own period of pressure and some superb interlinking play between Toms, Wilson and Stumbke, resulted in a mazy run from Stumbke who calmly placed it on a foot in the opposing D. The fiery Catalonian Aleix Roset stepped up to slot the resulting short corner hard and low to the keepers left to bring the sores back level which they remained at until the half time whistle. 

 

The second half started well for Loughts who had been building momentum before the end of the first. Unfortunately the home side were again the first to convert when a strong baseline run that used every inch of the pitch was pulled back to be tapped in and put the hosts in back in front. As the game wore on the Loughts boys’ fitness showed through and they were unlucky not to be rewarded with several outcomes in the opposition D and 25 from marauding runs through, notably from Mitch Jones and Will Hopkins, with tackles from the home side, the like more regularly being seen in a game played with an egg shaped ball, flying in in increasing numbers. 

 

One such challenge was eventually noticed and a short awarded and then a second re-awarded from the first’s breakdown. Ross Hetem handily sunk the ball into the opposing net with a powerful wristy flick on the second time of asking to again level the scores. 

 

End to end play continued until, close to the vocal crowd, Pat Longson attempted to perform a pirouette and make a tackle at the same time. It would have been a hugely impressive feat had he not made contact with with the stick of the opposing player. The resulting noise accompanied with a chorus of ‘oohs’ and ‘ahhs’ from the crowd was enough to make up the umpire’s mind and send Longson for an enforced break. 

 

With the conditions stacking against them Loughts defended, however they were unable to defend their goal as a foot was found in the D and a drag flicked short corner converted by Peterborough. 

 

With five minutes left to play Loughts attacked and won another short corner, this was flicked straight and hard by Roset, hitting a defender on the line in what appeared to be his leg but the umpire saw it differently and awarded a long.  The final minutes were played out without further incident resulting in just the second loss of the season for Old Loughtonians in a tightly contested game that on reflection would have been fair to have resulted in the points being shared between both sides. 

 

Final score 3-2.

 

Fantastic Result for Ladies 5th Team

In their last match before the Christmas break, the Ladies 5th Team set off to play Thurrock with only 9 players due to last minute injuries and illness. Despite the likelihood of a heavy defeat they all walked onto the pitch determined to try their best. Against all the odds they put in an amazing performance and at half time had kept the score to 0-0. Legs were tired and bodies aching but throughout the second half everyone battled until the final whistle. They walked off with heads held high and a hard fought 0-0 result. It was an inspirational match and one of the best Old Loughts performances for any team in a long while. The spectators on the side line made a great contribution to encouraging the team. Well done Liz, Roxy, Sam, Rosie, Rosie, Mel, Jill, Beth and excellent captaincy from Molly.