Flags: Oxford Iroquois 1 – 12 Milton Keynes

Milton Keynes got their first win of the season, in the Flags (cup) tie against Oxford Iroquios, the university 2nd team.

The Oxford team were clearly mostly novice players but they had youth over the (fairly youthful) MK squad and right from the start they ran hard and fought for everything. What they lacked today was a subs bench, with only the minimum 10 players. MK came with a deep 16-man squad so we ran hard ourselves knowing we should have more energy as the game progressed.

That’s how it turned out. Oxford had decent spells of possession in the first half, but lacked a real goal threat. MK were tight at the back all game, with goalie Kyle Pim cat-like between the pipes and the 4 long-stick defenders really on their game. Going forward MK were a bit off pace in the 1st half. Passing and movement was sluggish, often standing still waiting for someone else to make it happen. We relied on individual goals from Chris Webborn and Giles Cuddy in the first half, but got our act together in the 2nd half with more team-play goals, mostly finished by John Horbury.

The 4th quarter was all MK except for a well deserved consolation goal from Oxford. We scored 6 making the final score reflect the MK dominance but masks the 100% effort from Oxford. Our 11th goal was a truly solo effort from Ben Amos. In a man-down situation, Ben won the face-off, sprinted to goal and unloaded a shot into the bottom corner before the Oxford defence could react.  Miles Everitt scored our 12th and final goal, all alone up top and eventually saw Chris Webborn who was patiently waiting to feed him the ball from behind the goal. Once he looked up, Chris gave him the perfect pass, he caught, cradled, shot and scored.

Video Clip (via Facebook) – Miles scoring our 12th goal

Man-of-the-Match: Danny Adams, for a dominant display in defence forcing numerous turn-overs plus getting up off the floor after being totally smashed by an Oxford player late in the game.

D-of-the Day: Aaron Day, for an obscene tripping foul, correctly called as a personal foul but worthy of 2 minutes rather than 1 in the penalty box. Otherwise Aaron had a fantastic day playing long stick midfield role for the first time.

Game Stats
1:12 (0:2, 0:3, 0:6, 1:12)

MK Goals:
Chris Webborn (4)
John Horbury (4)
Giles Cuddy (2)
Ben Amos (1)
Miles Everitt (1)