South Berkshire 3s 3-2 Milton Keynes 3s

Report provided by David Emery

Is was a dark and stormy night (day). Everyone was throughly moist within seconds of stepping out of the changing rooms. MK, after numerous slow starts to the season, decided come out of the blocks with guns blazing. Unfortunately this energy proved to be, if anything too much. This left the preverbial tires spinning, but not really going anywhere.

Unable to break the deadlock from open play, South Berks relied upon a simple, but effective, short corner routine to bag the first goal of the game. Fired up by this, MK decided to go out even harder, which lead to some interesting and close passages of play in the south Berks 'D'. Unfortunately MK were unable to get the equaliser and eventually, South Berks were able to get a second first-half goal from another simple short corner deflection. This lead to the end of the first half finishing at 2-0 to south berks.

The half time talk gave clarity to the downhearted MK side. With some wise words from Mike Anderson, telling the team to calm play down, pick the pass and move for eachother (and a consalation point from captain Will about... something...) MK were ready to bounce back in the second half. Play began to open up effectively, leading to some very close opportunities. The umpires had, however, taken a back seat when it came to phisical fouls. This lead to some disappointing decisions against MK after promising runs. Despite this, MK were able to secure another short corner, which was cleanly converted with a simple strike from Doug Spenser that went straight through the goal keeper.

South Berks were awarded a short corner not long after MK's first goal. This was awarded when MK's keeper accidentally took-out (to put it mildly) a South Berks forward. What should have been a P-Flick was downgraded to a short corner that was then (probably rightly so) scored by South Berks, leaving the score at 3-1.

Not ready to give up, MK continued to apply strong offensive pressure, chances came and went without any joy. Finally, towards the end of the game, MK converted the the final goal of the game. While attempting to use their trademarked 'Short Corner Routine 6A' (what transpired was far from 'Short Corner Routine 6A'), MK bagged their second goal of the game thanks to a strong push from Hutch on the base line.

Less than a minute later, time was called, leaving the final score: 3-2 to South Berks. MK wait until next week to secure their first points of the season.