Family Affair Not Quite Enough

A Sunday afternoon in the sun at Halifax brought up the penultimate game of the season. Due to the time the team had some enforced changes. In goal Chocolate replaced Gandalf and Moonpig came in to defence. Von Ryan and Gina G were missing from the previous teams squad.
A strong Halifax side started the game in the ascendency. Chap were struggling with the unusual surface and Chocolate was called into action early on. In midfield Chuckle#2 and Fitbit were working hard to disrupt the Halifax attacks but the team were struggling to launch attacks of their own. A Halifax penalty corner saw Chocolate make another tremendous save, somehow deflecting a waste high shot over the bar. The Halifax pressure eventually told and Chocolate could do nothing with a sweet strike midway through the half.
As the half progressed Chap started to grow into the game. Flavio, playing an unusual left back role, Typhoo and Moonpig were annulling the Halifax attacks and a counter attacking Tomahawk Bandits pace caused ruffled in the Halifax defence, but the keeper stood strong to the effort. Texas and Iceburg were also starting to link well on the right hand side and it was through this partnership that the equaliser was created. Iceburg collected the ball outside the D and lifted the ball over the defence to Texas midway in the D. With the keeper advancing, Texas played the ball left for Tomahawk Bandit to shoot into the vacant goal. The half time whistle was blown shortly afterwards.
A formation change saw Chap play better in the second half. The play became much more evenly spread across the whole pitch. It was Chap who had the more attacking thrust but they were unfortunately to be undone on the counter attack. Moonpig did well to cut out the initial counter but Halifax were able to overload the D, taking defenders and keeper out of position, before slotting the ball in the left corner.
Though a touch deflated Chap responded in the way they have done all season and took the fight back to their opponents. Whilst the second game of double headers can be more pedestrian in speed, Chuckle#2 and Fitbit seemed to gain energy and continued to make inroads into the Halifax backline. Texas was also starting to deceive his marker and played in some lovely crosses. Chap gained a small number of penalty corners. From one of these Gigolo played a well struck cross/shot that Hutch met perfectly on the near post to deflect the ball into the roof of the net for 2-2. Shortly after Chap nearly had the lead with an identical penalty corner, though on this occasion Hutch deflected Gigolo’s cross low and the keeper saved well with his feet.
As the game raced towards its conclusion Chap pressed for a winner. All the forwards had chances but unjustly it was to be at the other end that the winner was scored. Boss Hogg was closed down in the left back position and played the ball into the centre and Moonpig. Appearing to hit an opponent’s foot, Moonpig was wrong footed and conceded a penalty corner. The strike was true and found the bottom left corner to give Halifax the win.
Over after match chicken in gravy , Chocolate narrowly defeat Texas to the MOM StarBlazer, Boss Hogg taking the DOD Hotdog for various offences.