Men's 1st vs Sheffield Hallam Men's 2s

Like parents hurrying their children to the airport for a 12:30pm lunchtime flight, the new dream team coaching staff, Roper & Sons, got the premier Chester Mens hockey team down to Abbeygate with hours to spare so that no stone was left unturned in their preparation. Cliffy also had time to tell a joke so funny, he repeated it 4 times with a fantastic sympathy-laugh-to-joke ratio of 0.75. Better than expected early season form, but pundits are dubious whether he will be able to continue it into the season.

The game started and Chester got off on the front foot, with Captain King slotting in a misplaced short corner after a few minutes. Chester were purring. Keith Roper ran his hands through his locks, excited at what the new season might bring.

Like a cat stuck out in the rain for too long, Chester soon stopped purring and started running around erratically, making some odd noises towards umpires every now and then. The only exception was our resident amphibian, Ed Crawford, who was well at home in the conditions hopping up and down the right flank seemingly everywhere, much like the 2005 hit single Crazy Frog.

It’s a few days since the match so I can't remember too many more details of the first half, but I would guess there was some passing, tackling and shooting. How much of each and who did it, I'm not sure. At some point though, Hallam got an equaliser after a gap was found in between Joe Laws' left and right foot, before our lanky forward Jim Challenor-mously long arms used his extra reach to deflect one in. 2-1 Chester at half time.

Chester put the game to bed in the 2nd half, with about 33 minutes of it spent passing the ball between Kingy, Neil and Will at the back. Great for our passing stats, not great for the fans. Instead of pressing, Hallam's tactical approach to this was to hope some supernatural force would strike all Chester players down, giving them some good chances on goal. Roper & Sons response, with the combination of Keith's wisdom and John's youthful energy, was to gamble on this not happening. The gamble paid off. Kingy, Neil and Will were able to pass the ball between them with all the composure and class of 3 blokes who were extremely composed and classy.

On the rare occasions those three didn’t have the ball, Chester went up the other end and scored. Lanky forward Jim bagged his 2nd of the game before Ben Scott put a short corner dragflick middle-right-ish, after being instructed to put it bottom right for a deflection. 2 goals from corners - if we don't know what we're doing on them, there's no way the opposition will.

The final whistle brought about a convincing 4-1 victory for Chester where they didn't really get out of 2nd gear. After the game, everyone was wet and cold. To compound things, because of this pesky pandemic which is making everything terrible, no pints were had, no laughs were shared and no one was inappropriately flirted with by the bartender at The Vic.

So instead, and to quote the conclusion to my Year 2 creative writing homework for Miss Jones, "everyone went home".

Urmston next week, interestingly the only team in the league who’s name starts with a sound you make when you don’t know what to say.