Hockeyed at Hockey

For the regular readers amonst you, you will probably remember my Hockeyed at cricket blog a while back. In case you don't understand the expression hockeyed, it basically means getting the crap kicked out of you at a sport. I surprisingly found definitions of it on the internet here and here.

Anyway, I recently became captain of the new 6th team at Wapping Hockey Club. They decided to enter an extra team in the league because there are so many extra players in the club. And they asked me to captain it, to which I said yes.

So our first game was away to Clacton 2, in Clacton-On-Sea, Essex, about a 2 hour drive from London. Not an ideal place to start your campaign. Nor was it ideal that we only had 5 players available, in spite of our squad supposedly being 19 strong. The club in general was short players this past weekend, which had a knock on effect on us. So we borrowed some players from the 5th team to make up the difference.

The game itself was pretty uneventful, except for us conceding 2 fast goals, before we drew level, before we conceded yet another goal. And all this before half time. They got 3 more lucky goals in the second half before we got one goal back near the end. Ended up 6-3, even though I thought it was only 5-3.

There was one funny bit though. There was this little kid, about 15 who was quite handy and managed to score a few goals. I was doing a bit of defending and ended up marking him. Just to let him know I was there, I walked next to him, and kind of got my legs tangled up in his. He didnt fall, just stumbled a bit. He wasnt too happy about that, but nothing major.

Two seconds later he got the ball and I tackled him, putting the ball out over the sideline. Straight away, he flipped. I thought it was hilarious, this 15 year old getting annoyed and trying to stand up to me! I just walked away, knowing I had done my job: piss him off! He got spoken to the referee for retaliating, which was a bonus.

At this stage we were losing 6-2, so I started to amuse myself other ways. And yes, I chose to pick on a little boy. But it was fun! I had to amuse myself somehow to take my mind off the score!

After the game, he didn't shake my hand, but I annoyed him even more, by going out of my way to shake his hand and prove that I am an honest sportsman!