Badgers Vs Sutton Coldfield Lions

Sutton Coldfield Lions 5 v 3 Yardley Badgers

The final game of a long but very pleasing season for our Badgers’ side. They are a credit to our club and they all should be very proud of their achievements. Everyone's individual skill development has increased tremendously and the teamwork has gone from strength to strength.

The home team kindly offered us two players as a few of our players were going to be fifteen minutes late due to traffic woes around Sutton. We graciously accepted the players and placed them on the right wing. The game started with Yardley having the better of the early tussles. Our guest players were getting into great positions and passed the ball well to the team. The midfield linked up and pressed the home team constantly, bossing the midfield. Yardley defence also pushed high to aggressively pursue the first goal. The Yardley team had chances but the shots went wide in these early stages. The attacking formation did leave holes at the back which Sutton Coldfield took advantage of, but these half chances were either cleared by the adult keeper or the defenders frantically chasing back and tackling the strikers.

The early Yardley pressure eventually told and Ayesha scored a brace! The first goal, she quickly picked up the rebound off the keeper pads to slot home precisely in the corner. Her second was from a righthand cross, scoring a power hit close to the keeper but with too much power for the keeper to react quickly enough. Between these two goals our late arrivals gradually integrated into the team and our guest players returned to their own squad. Sutton improved as the game entered the 30 minutes mark and got a lot possession in the visitors’ "D". This pressure told and in the dying seconds they got a cross past the keeper finding two players running in on the back post to both tap in. 

 Going into halftime 2-1 up, Yardley were buoyed by the best (first half) performance this season. 

A little aggrieved the two home Umpires queried our "adult" players, constantly questioning whether we had more than the two allowed. This was a huge complement to our youth squad who are all of legitimate qualifying age.

 Second half was a little more Sutton Coldfield's half with Yardley really struggling with fatigue whilst the 14 rotating home team players remained fresh. The home team soon got the equaliser from a dazzling bit of individual skill, as he dribbled past four defenders and beat the keeper at his near post. This spurred Yardley on, and the fantastic game of hockey turned into an end to end affair for ten frantic minutes. Yardley soon re-took the lead again, from a penalty corner with Jahed scoring low to the keeper’s right. 3-2 to the visitors.

 With fifteen minutes to go the Yardley midfield decided to keep attacking high and this really stretched the team shape as the defence stayed relatively deep. Large gaps appeared for Sutton to breakaway through midfield and challenge the unprotected back three. Soon the home team equalised. This unfortunately made the Yardley midfield more determined to retake the lead and stretched the team even further and Sutton got two more goals on the break. 

 This was a great game of hockey and at times it looked as though Yardley would get a win in the last game of the season, but alas Sutton Coldfield reorganized and strengthened at half time and towards the end were peppering Yardley's goal, hitting the post twice and the cross bar. The Yardley team was competitive for 60 minutes but a win eluded them due to tiredness in the final stages of the game. Yardley should take pride in their efforts today and for that matter the whole season, well done.