Victory over Bristol City meant that although other teams have games in hand, Dragons cannot be overhauled at the top of Division 1. Bristol City can finish level on points by winning their remaining games, but would lose out on head-to-head record - just as they did last year.
With the seconds clinching their title on Monday, it’s been a great week for the club. Big congratulations to all the players who made it all happen.
13-7 Joey Niblett (4), Remco Broekhuis (4), Angharad Morgan (2), Lee O’Sullivan (2), Chris Gubby (1), Helen Gubby, Rachel Knight, Sian Hunt
As in the previous season, Bristol City had lost early on to Dragons and then won every match thereafter, leaving Dragons needing to beat them again in order to retain the title. A draw or even a defeat could still allow Dragons to sneak the league, but they’d be relying on a sequence of other results going their way. Both sides were at full strength, with Bristol City having the confidence of victories in their last 6 matches, but knowing that they were yet to beat Dragons in 3 previous meetings.
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10-3 Gareth Thomas (3), Josh Cockburn (3), James Frost (2), Amy Shillabeer (1), Pete Obee (1), Alex Thomas, Caroline Lowdon, Chrissy Rowlatt, Gwenno Jones, Julie Saunders, Magnus Dons
Despite much compaints about having to start a game at 9.30 am (just wait till the summer tournaments, guys!) Dragons managed a bumper squad of 11 players for this game. Given that they had to get up an hour earlier, Bristol City had done well to bring along a full team too. (more…)
Excellent pair of victories for the Dragons teams, brief reports and updated (top of the) tables follows… (more…)
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.
8-6 Amy Shillabeer (2), Caroline Lowdon (2), Gareth Thomas (1), Joey Niblett (1), Josh Cockburn (1), Magnus Dons (1), Gwenno Jones, Julie Saunders.
A top of the table clash against the only team to have beaten the Dragons all season promised a very tight game, and it was always competetive. However, Dragons fielded a much more experienced side than last time, while Uni were missing several of the more dangerous players from the first game. (more…)
Wednesday 7th March, 7pm, BINGO, Castle Bingo (on Newport Road). Contact Sian for details.
Saturday 10th March, 7pm End of Season Party, Josh’s house.
Saturday 21st April, EKL Awards Night. In Bristol somewhere.
There will also be our club awards night sometime in April, which is always a good night. Any suggestions for venue or so on to Helen, please.
31-1 Remco Broekhuis (8), Chris Gubby (6), Angharad Morgan (5), Lee O’Sullivan (3), Joey Niblett (3), Amy Shillabeer (2), Josh Cockburn (2), Rachel Knight (1), Sian Hunt (1)
After two successive defeats, a game against a Horfield side missing several key players looked promising for getting back to winning ways, but the performance was better than could have been expected, with the shooting that had misfired so badly against Exeter being particularly good. (more…)
16-3 Rachel Knight (4), Gareth Thomas (3), Sian Hunt (3), Josh Cockburn (2), Caroline Lowdon (1), Gwen Jones (1), Magnus Dons (1), Steve Fung (1), Alex Thomas, Pete Obee.
A fine performance from Dragons seconds, who managed to regain some of the fluency they’d shown earlier in the season.
The calendar has been updated to include the weekends of the three playoff games in our league. The fixtures themselves can’t be finalised until it’s known who the top 4 sides will be - only Bristol City are guaranteed qualifiers for the first division and only us and Bristol Uni in the second division. But if you can keep those weekends free that’d be super!
Also, I’ve added a list of tournaments that we might want to enter. For the British ones there’s no hurry about deciding, but if we want to go abroad for a tournament this summer (like we did to Stockholm last year) we should choose early to allow cheap flights and accomodation. It’s not an exhaustive list and any suggestions are welcome.
