Cardiff Dragons Korfball Club

10-8 Lee O’Sullivan (3), Remco Broekhuis (3), Chris Gubby (2), Joey Niblett (1), Rachel Knight (1), Angharad Morgan, Helen Gubby, Sian Hunt

After a narrow defeat in the home fixture, Dragons visited the Bristol Badgers knowing that they couldn’t afford a similar slip up this time. The game was played the week before the BUSA student nationals, so the uni side were at their most focused, but they also had a couple of injury problems, while Dragons were at full strength.

Dragons started well, a quick passing move from Sian and Ang, Chris’s run forced the switch and Lee nailed the finish from 5 metres out. Although it wasn’t easy, Dragons managed to extend their lead to 4-1, through Rachel’s long shot, them Remco and Lee scoring from close range.

In the previous fixture it had been the Badgers boys who had provided the main threat, but they were handled well this time - Joey in particular shut down their top scorer, while Chris regularly came up with blocks and interceptions. Instead it was the uni girls who posed a threat consistently running at the Dragons defence and taking their chances well. Remco managed a second goal but Dragons were throwing away too much possession to allow them to utilise Remco and Lee’s dominance at the post and the Badgers brought the score level to 5-5 at half-time.

The second half was also very tight, with Dragons struggling to get the long shots to drop, while Bristol continued to search for opportunities near the basket. Dragons moved back into the lead when Helen again beat her player and this time received the ball to win the penalty, which Remco put away. Joey’s long shot doubled the advantage, then after Bristol scored again, Sian found Chris with a neat ball over the top and he sprinted clear of his marker to score.

Again Bristol Uni came back, dragging the score level at 8-8, with only a few minutes left. Dragons went straight up the pitch to win a penalty though, and showing great composure Lee put it away. With the Badgers becoming more open as they tried to recover the situation, Ang fed Chris for his second runner to complete the scoring 10-8.

A very tough match against opponents who did superbly to disrupt Dragons passing and constantly pressurised in attack. Dragons certainly created more chances, and in a better shooting performance might have won more comfortably, but the team did very well to win despite a lot of shots bouncing off the basket.

Thanks to Ian D. for reffing and to all the drivers.

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This entry was posted on Monday, February 26th, 2007 at 5:25 pm and is tagged Site News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.