Sutho is always a place for innovation. Last weekend was no different.
There must have been a mighty flash of inspiration as the always mighty tussle between our Under 13b Thorny Devils and Blue Tongues was about to begin. It became not only a battle for the usual Sutho v Sutho bragging rights – it became a tussle for – wait for it – The Lizards Cup.
Read the match report below, but can Sutho fans look forward to seeing a suitable trophy? Perhaps a Sutho-themed Tyrannosaurus Rex wielding a Sutho-colours hockey stick? Send your thoughts to secretary@sutho.com.au!
Thanks to the Sutho managers./correspondents who sent match reports last weekend. They are much appreciated by club members. More will be welcome, especially as we have pictures from games – but didn’t get reports. Over to you, coaches and managers.
Juniors
Under 11A
Geckos 5 v UNSW 2
The first game back after the school holidays and the Geckos were wide awake and ready to play hockey.
They went on the attack early and some great teamwork and passing saw Rohan score the first goal within a few minutes. The game was mostly spent at UNSW’s end in the first half and the score was an impressive 5-0 at half time.
Momentum swung UNSW’s way in the second half and most of the game was spent at our end. But some great defensive work and amazing goal keeping by Luca kept the score line to 5-1.
UNSW were awarded a penalty corner with a few seconds to go and the Geckos kept the ball out of the goal but gave away another penalty corner. They also defended this well, but UNSW gained a third penalty corner. This time found the gap and slotted the ball through for a well deserved second goal.
A great game to watch! All the Geckos played well and didn’t give up until the final whistle was blown.
Goals: Luke 2, Rohan, Eliana, Jack.
Best and Fairest: 2pts each Julian, Jude, Kaylee.
U11B
Sutho Blue Tongues 2 UNSW 2
What a game our Blue Tongues had against UNSW today with a 2-2 score.
Our little champs played a really good game for first week back, with Ava being our goalie and our defenders, making it almost impossible for UNSW to score. All in all both teams played a good game.
Thanks to Rory Staples for the pictures of the Blue Tongues in action.
Under 13A
Geckos 6 UNSW 1
Another good game today with a 6 to 1 victory.
Holly positioned herself well within the circle and successfully put the ball in the goal four times.
Tomas played a great team game with short, sharp and fast passes to his team mates and ran hard in both attack and defence.
Peter and Mayah played very solid games in their respective positions.
The rest of the team played well and continue to learn and improve on our team structure to transfer the ball, keep it wide and then score the goal.
We all celebrated the win and Chris Goodman’s birthday with some very tasty doughnuts at the end of the game.
Best and fairest: 2 Holly Antilla, 2 Tomas McCowan, 1 Peter Rast, 1 Mayah Tait.
Goals: Holly Antilla 4, Lachlan Duhne and Chris Goodman 1.
Under 13B
Sutherland Blue Tongues 3 Sutherland Thorny Devils 2
On a beautiful autumn morning for our first home game of the year it was hockey’s version of State of Origin – the battle was for the Lizards Cup.
There was early pressure on the Thorny Devils’ goal with lots of chances but with little reward. Blue Tongues then fell asleep and against the run of play Thorny Devils took the lead 0-1. The first half developed into a midfield arm wrestle with both teams finding it hard to penetrate each other’s defence.
After the oranges Blue Tongues sat back and allowed Thorny Devils to control the match and they took a well deserved lead 0-2.
With 10 minutes remaining, Blue Tongues finally decided to play hockey and scored a goal by Cooper after great lead up by Tully: 1-2 The energy levels increased and teamwork improved and an excellent counter play saw Kai score to level the game with three minutes on the clock: 2-2.
The momentum was all with Blue Tongues now and looked like a different team was playing, and with one minute left we finally converted one of our many chances with Cooper smashing the ball into the net for 3-2.
A great end to an exciting game of hockey.
Best & fairest: 3 Tully, 2.Cooper, Kai.
Goals: Cooper 2 , Kai 1
Go the Blue Tongues
Under 13B
Sutho Thorny Devils 2 vs Sutho Blue Tongues 3
Round 3 marked the first local derby of the season between Hoy’s Thorny Devil’s and Fisher’s Blue Tongues. Sutho bragging rights were on the table.
Its was a steady start by both teams. Hoy’s TD hit the early lead with Amy finishing off a pinpoint cross right in front of goal.
With half time approaching, Hoy’s TD went into the dug out 2-0 up, with skilfull lead up play from the midfield by Isabel executing a long accurate pass to put our forward Finn in clear space to finish it off, I could imagine the grin on coach Hoy ‘s face going from ear to ear..
Second half and coach Fisher’s BT showed determination, grit and true character not to let the score board affect their emotions. They came out into the second half ready to take the game on.
It was a tight half with Hoy’s TD backs Steven, Ken, Nathanial and Darcy showing great game awareness and players Abby, Lucy, Lachlan and Dominic chasing and running down that white ball.
Our forwards Liam and Finn, despite great positional play, were unable to add to the scoreboard. Our star goal keeper Jacob blocked and kicked every shot from the BT.
The game set to be a draw at 2-2, but with 1 minute 20 seconds left Fisher’s BT were given a short corner and they didn’t let the opportunity slip with a cracker goal to take the match.
Well done to both well coached teams for a thrilling match.
B&F points: Darcy 3, Lachlan 2, Jacob 1.
Under 15
Blue Tongues 1 Bankstown 3
After having our holiday break we were ready to get back into playing hockey.
Amelia and Jonathon controlled the middle while Harley, Lily and James defended well.
The score doesn’t reflect the effort put in by all the team. Better luck next week.
Looking forward to having another great game next week.
Metro
We didn’t get any match reports from the U17 and U15 teams, but Rory Staples was one the sideline to capture some of the action from the U15 Sutho v Mosman game. Thanks, Rory.
U17
Sutho 0 Bankstown 4
Déjà vu…Friday night, insufficient players… but this time the Geckos just couldn’t conjure up a win as they have on prior occasions.
Playing Bankstown at Bankstown was always going to be tough, but injuries, illness and a no-show meant the team was down to 9 players, which included our new recruit, Max. Thankfully Kai agreed to play another game after just finishing his game with the u15 Thorny Devils to boost our numbers to 10.
It was a fairly sluggish first half with players seemingly excited to be back on the field after the Easter break, but it took some time to get back into the swing of hockey.
Both teams played solid hockey for the first 10 minutes of the game and Sean did some amazing saves with his first time as goalie this season to ensure Bankstown had to work hard to earn any goals.
However, the weight of possession eventually resulted in Bankstown being in the lead 1-0 at quarter time. Although Adrian and Zac M earned some short corners for the Geckos in the second quarter, the team just couldn’t buy a goal and we were eventually 3-0 down at half time.
The third quarter was fairly even in terms of possession, but the Geckos went down another goal off a Bankstown short corner.
There were also further great saves from Sean in goals and the defence team of Darcy, Charles and Kai.
As players were run off their feet in the fourth quarter, it was pleasing that the Geckos didn’t give up – there were some attacking raids by the strikers, terrific battling by the defence, and non-stop activity from the mids.
And although there was a little moral victory with the fourth quarter being 0-0 with the Geckos being a player short for the whole game, the final score was a valiant 4-0 loss.
B&F points: Sean 3, Macca 2, Kai 1.
Men
First grade
Sutho 8 Northern Districts 0
The match took us up to Pennant Hills for the second week in a row to play the newly formed Northern Districts club as break away from NWS. We actually got to use a dressing room this week as against the week before where we had to use a gazebo out in the open which was pretty unimpressive together with no score board or time clock. Apart from this we took the match up to a fairly young inexperienced team which resulted in a very comfortable win. There was a good spread of goal scorers which is always a good thing as we don’t need to rely on one or two specialists to do so. Benny scored his second hat trick in this early part of the season getting his mojo back for the team. We also saw the return of Kieran Govers which added a little more sting in the team all round. It is always hard to maintain high quality through out a game when you are leading 6-0 at half time. However it was a little disappointing to see us slow the pace some what in the 2nd half and only score 1 goal in each 1/4. Generally some good hockey by the boys and continue sailing along. We travel to Cintra next week to play Glebe at another great time of 6.30 pm when all 1st grade matches should be played, I THINK NOT! Together with the fact that we have been separated from our other PL teams once again with the new innovative thinking of SHA ???
B & F : Jono Scott 1, Scott Govers 2, Mitchell Wray 3. Goals: Matt Phillips 1, Kieran Govers 1, Alex Shaw 1, Brady Anderson 1, Harry Roberts 1, Matt Bennett 3.
Peter Krepp– Manager
4th Grade
Sutho 0 Briars 2
Sutho started strongly with multiple short corners in the first quarter but were unable to convert. Briars were mainly playing the long ball from the back to their strikers.
Briars went ahead 1-0 by converting their first short corner of the match. They later extended the lead after a turn over in their defensive quarter resulted in a break away counter attack finishing with a 2 on 1 with the keeper.
In the 4th quarter Sutho hit the post on a short corner and put the Briars goalie to work forcing a few great saves.
Best and fairest: 3 Elliot Stark, 2 Marty Taylor, 1 Brendon Hol.
5th grade
Sutherland 6 Manly 5
This week 5th grade was up against Manly’s 1st grade side, so it was a tough game and a hard fought win.
The scoreline definitely reflects the game, as the game was pretty fast because both teams would quickly counterattack at each opportunity they got. As a result, Sutho and Manly would be scoring right after each other.
Donni picked up a massive haul of 4 goals, with some help from Manly defenders who scored a couple of own goals from accidental deflections!
Overall a tough game that could have gone either way, but it was great to get a win at Pennant Hills (definitely too far to go for a loss).
Best and fairest: Nic Donni 3, Craig Turner 2, Ollie Turner 1
Goals: Nic Donni (4), Mark Bonnici 1, Phil Rowling 1
8th Grade
Sutho 3 Norwest Strikers 1
Our match started pretty slow on this sunny but nice temp day.
We start with the bear 11 thinking we wont have subs. After about 10mins we have the rest of the team turn up.
The game was not going our way. Our structure was struggling and wasn’t as strong as previous weeks.
Pennant hills took advantage of the situation and score. Thankfully half time came soon after.
Mark quite rightly expressed his disappointment. Steve re-organised positions slightly and we take the field.
From the start of the second half it felt better. We were able to have PH back peddling. We were able to sustain an attack.
It was in one of these attacks where the play was built up and we have the numbers when it was passed to Jordan who scored the leveler. We are back in the game!
Play continues with David making some brilliant saves and clearances helped by Ross, Adam and Mark.
We again put the pressure on PH to have a short corner. Didn’t go to well but went to Kevin who shoots and it goes through their keepers pads.
A few more shots are either saved, go wide but the second half was much better than the first.
Best and fairest: 3 Jordan Wood, 2 David Lucas, 1 Cameron Bayley.
Goals: Jordan Wood and Kevin Margetson.
Women
SEHA Women’s Premier Grade
Sutherland 5 POHOGS 0
It was a beautiful sunny Saturday at Marang Hockey Field, perfect weather to play hockey.
We were up against POHOGS, who we first played a few weeks ago and had a draw. We knew we wanted to come out strongly, as it was top of the table clash.
With Sarah being away this week, Grant kindly took us through another hard and fast training session and also coaching us.
After last weekend’s great game we wanted to maintain our momentum and possession of the ball including our tight passing skills and that’s exactly what the ladies did in the first quarter.
This was by obtaining outcomes with PC’s quite quickly in the match, all though we didn’t score off them, it didn’t take long before we scored our first goal.
In the last quarter we started to drop momentum slightly as fatigue was setting in and POHOGS managed to obtain a few little breakaways.
But due to strong defence with a lot of communication between our backs we managed to hold and stop them from scoring.
Within the last 5 minutes of the game we held the ball wide with stick to stick passing, which is what we have had a lot of focus on with our training sessions. It paid off as we managed to score our last goal seconds before the whistle blew winning 5-0.
It was such an enjoyable game to play!
Goals: Kristen Agius 2, Iris Vanhecke 1, Ruth Sannes 1, Ashton Waters 1.
Player points: Kristen Agius 3, Ashton Waters 2, Kayla Edwards 1.