Chichester Hockey Club worked very hard to implement suitable Covid 19 precautions to allow their tournament to go ahead with four different teams; Chichester, Havant, Gosport and Petersfield. Sadly we could only take 6 players (no subs) to keep numbers within limits as it would have been a good opportunity to introduce new players to competitive matches.

The tournament started with a hard fought draw with Havant, each team's midfield cancelling out the efforts of the other. Then on to Gosport, a stray pass to their star player saw them score a breakaway goal to put us under pressure. However, we stuck to the game plan and sure enough Harry Cleife got onto the ball in the D and hit it into the corner. Another Harry goal in the last two minutes saw Petersfield take a deserved win having dominated possession and territory.

Confidence now high for the third game, Chichester were soon down a goal as George Shanks spun on the edge of the D and won a free hit. Taking it quickly George threaded it through to an unmarked Thomas Crabtree who swept it in at the near post. Held almost entirely in their own half Chichester were taken about by the strong tackling of George Sands and Alex Temple. It was Alex's determination that saw her win the ball on the edge of the D and feed Harry for our second goal.

The second game against Havant saw more midfield battles and another no score draw. Then came Gosport who were keen to avenge the first defeat....but after three minutes they found themselves 2-0 down; Alex swept a free hit across the D for Thomas to sweep in and then Harry took a rapid free hit as a self pass, driving into the D to score through a crowd of defenders. Before Gosport had time to recover Henry Marshall completed two crunching tackles and pushed the ball through to Harry to finish off between two defenders. Thomas keep up the pressure and was rewarded when he poached the ball and went on to score on his own. Gosport were reeling and a poor 16 yard hit went straight to Harry who scored before the defence could recover.

Starting the final game, against Chichester, more goals were expected but in the end we showed good maturity to grind out a 1-0 win after George swept the ball across to the always available Thomas to push home at the far post.

So 6 games yielding 2 draws and 4 wins was a great result for our first tournament of the year. Our next tournament is at Haslemere on 8th November and we are hoping to be able to take two teams and subs as usual (but let's see...).

0-0 vs Chichester
2-1 vs Gosport
2-0 vs Chichester
0-0 vs Havant
5-0 vs Gosport
1-0 vs Chichester