Tulse Hill (Away)

After 10 matches of the season gone, Staines headed into their final match before the Christmas break trying to put the previous week out of theirs mind but also mindful that it was a reminder of what happens when the team plays like Tottenham (pre Mourinho).
With the top of league extremely tight with the top 5 teams separated by not many points, a win vs Tulse Hill & Dulwich would be crucial so that Staines could stay top of the Tree over the Christmas break. Tulse Hill came into the game with 6 wins and 4 defeats so we knew it wouldn’t be an easy match.
The 11 o’clock pushback meant that some of the team had an early wake up call to get to the ground for 9:45. The journey to Tulse Hill always seems to throw up some good moments like the Crystal Paris from Floydy. This year it turned to someone apparently mentioning some interesting comments down the intercom at the receptionists. This was denied by all members of the Staines team as they were the first batch that arrived at the venue! The rumours started flying around!
The warm-up started well with everyone keen to do better than the previous week which wasn’t a hard feat to achieve considering how bad it was. Ali finally arrived after his long haul flight from Spain via a stop at Paris (not Crystal Paris apparently) and got to the ground in time to complete his warm-up.
The match got underway with Tulse Hill sitting off and Staines passing the ball around well. The match ebbed and flowed with both teams having some chances but nothing clear cut. The umpires decided that they were not being involved in the game enough and decided to take drastic action. Tulse Hill were awarded a free hit just inside the Staines 25 from an interesting tackle from the Staines player. He was given a warning for the tackle which was accepted and said that it was a good bit of skill. That apparently showed dissent and was given a green card. The Tulse Hill player then asked the umpire where it was as he wasn’t sure, the umpire decided that he was causing a delay to the match and reversed the decision! All in all, an awful couple of minutes for the umpires and they decide to continue that theme for the rest of the match by being completely unreasonable. Both teams got on the match and decided to try and ignore the umpires as much as possible.
Staines scored through a couple of magical goals from the returning James Laszlo. The first goal was a lovely finish from the top of the attacking circle and then poaching the second one. Staines went into the half time break 2-0 up and confident of increasing the lead in the second half.
Tulse Hill had a different idea about not making the second half an easy ride with an early short corner which was scored to make it 2-1. Staines responded well with a couple of trademark goals from Alex Betts to make the score 4-1 going into the final 11 minutes of the match. The umpires kept deciding to interfere with the match by reversing a decision after Larry was ‘time wasting’ after spending about three seconds to take a free-hit. We decided to be generous and let a couple of the Tulse Hill players score to help their goal tally and to make things interesting for the last couple of minutes. Final score 4-3 to Staines and we head into the Christmas break with 8 wins, 2 draws and 1 defeat from the first 11 matches and top of the League. An excellent first half of the season but knowing that the second half will be just as tough with the top 5 teams all within a 5 point gap. We will need to perform just as well, if not, even better to keep up the position in the league. There will be some bumps along the way and we will need to respond like we did this week and a decent performance.
First league match is away vs Surbiton after Christmas which will be a tough game with them a point behind in second place.