After an impressive performance and 3 points last week, 13 Villains made their way down to Tonbridge for a 4pm push back against Marden Russets 4's. It was a much changed line up from last week's win.
Ville started on the front foot right from the off with some sublime hockey carving Russets open time and time again. The onslaught continued for the first 15/20 mins with Marden unable to deal with Ville pinging the ball around at pace. Marden with their first venture forward were awarded a very questionable penalty corner, which they slotted away. 1-0 Russets against the run of play.
Half time.
Simon, JB and Sidders rallied the troops at half time. Let's get back to what we were doing for the first 15/20 mins.
Ville came out strong again in the 2nd half but soon found themselves 2 down after another short corner.
A massive 20 minutes was required to salvage anything from this game now.
Ville managed to get their first penalty corner of the game. Clean stop from JB, neat slip from Perks to the left to Simon whose effort beat the keeper but was stopped on the line by a Russets defender's foot. Penalty stroke. Perks stepped up but unfortunately rifled it just the wrong side of the post.
A few minutes later, JB travelled into the D and the ball found its way to Perks. This time no mistake, a reverse stick shot beat the keeper. Game on, 2-1 with 10 mins to go! Ville continued to pile on the pressure, the equaliser surely was going to come.
Yes it did. Simon played another fantastic diagonal ball from just outside the D towards the back post and Charlie managed to get infront of his man and got a touch on it to deflect it into the goal to make it 2-2.
That is how it ended. Ville's best performance of the season against one of the top 4 teams in the league. Only 4 weeks ago we played their 'B team' of the league and lost.
Everyone played their part today. As we were walking off their team said to us 'how are you where you are in the league when you play like that?'
A confident Cliftonville have another of the top sides of the league in Canterbury next week at home.
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