Chiefs away, 1sts
20-5 Remco Broekhus (5), Dave Thomas (3), Helen Gubby (3), Joey Niblett (3), Josh Cockburn (3), Rachel Knight (3), Emily Tuttiett, Hannah Jones, Helena Nelson, Sian Hunt
After a fairly comprehensive win over the students, Dragons 1 took on another of Cardiff City’s reserve sides, the Chiefs, at Talybont on Saturday. The Chiefs fielded some new players, but with several first teamers unavailable, the Dragons were forced into a few changes too. Josh made his season’s first team debut, alongside Emily Tuttiet, with Remco, Taff, Joey, Rachel, Sian and Helen back from last week’s line up.
The opening exchanges saw Remco fire in a hat-trick from a combined distance of about a yard, as he punished mistakes around the post. Rachel landed her first long-shot, as did Helen. Taff failed to recreate last week’s ‘length of the court’ goal from Joey’s pass as he botched the shot, but soon made amends with a mid-range effort, then converted Rachel’s sharp pass to him under the post. It was then Joey and Josh’s turn to get in on the scoring, running the Cardiff City Committee ragged and extending our lead. Emily was then forced off with a hand injury, and her replacement Helena promptly followed after she was unlucky enough to be standing directly under the basket the only time the Chiefs managed to get it in during the first half and saw the ball cannon into her eye. The Chiefs completed the trifecta of injuries as Craig M went down with no one near him and had to leave for hospital with an injured ankle (hope everyone’s feeling better soon, and that your ankle isn’t as damaged as feared Craig!)
Halftime came with the Dragons 11-1 up and somehow 8 players still on the pitch! Susan Belfourd came on for the Chiefs in the second half and immediately things became more difficult for the Dragons. The Chiefs picked up 4 more goals in the second half, Max managing a hat-trick, but pleasingly none were scored against Hannah, our newest first team debutante.
Rachel began the half nailing her second longshot, Taff and Remco both scored from point blank range, and Helen added to her tally with text-book mid-range and running-in shots. Joey and Josh both completed their hattricks from around the post, as the Dragons dominated posession at that end. Remco’s vigil at the post saw him create several more chances for Rachel, who’s shooting percentage dropped all the way to 40% before her late runner completed her hattrick too.
All in all, a good all round performance from the Dragons. 20 goals is a great achievement, but more pleasing will be the spread of scoring, 6 hat-tricks is testimony to a side willing to keep looking for the open players and vary the attack, and we never got bogged down, keeping the scoreboard ticking over at a constant rate. In future we will need to look for more goals from long range though. In all fairness the Chiefs will probably rue the lack of killer instinct that caused them to miss lots of the good chances they did create, and had these gone in, the scoreboard would have a had a more realistic look to it, since, in the second half especially, the teams were more evenly matched than the score suggests.
Many thanks to Ceri for reffing