Women's 1s v Luton Poly & QMWank

LSE Women’s Hockey 5
Luton Poly 0

LSE Women’s Hockey 2
Queen Mary Wank 3

Last week saw the mighty first team take on Luton Polytechnic, who arrived on the pitch looking like the air stewardesses they all aspire to be. As for our team of mismatches we looked far from serious! Little did they know that appearance isn’t everything as within the first 3 minutes we managed to put one past their far from average keeper. Our lifted spirits continued as Andrea, our new goal scoring machine managed to score a hat trick within 15 minutes, our fifth goal came from club captain Nat who put in a great performance all game. We have to admit that it is extremely strange this year as we seem to have far too many good players, who naturally all play in the same position, so we saw great performance from our midfielders who throughout the game included Abby, Martha, Andrea, Louise, Tara etc.... Our backs had a little more action in the second half, however the easyjet crew were unable to put anything past keeper Kristina. The final score was 5-0, however it could have been more with captain Meenal calling for everyone to ‘get in the D’, shame we didn’t take her seriously! Wednesday night was a bit of a shambles from a girl’s hockey point of view, with myself returning to the Valleys and little enthusiasm within the team, so we had to make up for it this week,

Admittedly we weren’t expecting much from the Queen Mary side, whom we had beaten on every occasion last year, however as we have learnt with our squad a few very good freshers really do make the difference. It turns out our captains took note of Claudio Ranieri’s squad rotation techniques as this week we fielded a changed side. The first half was un-impressive with us trailing 3-0 at half time, luckily the game picked up significantly. We were awarded a suspicious number of short corners from referee’s JJ and Melissa and luckily enough new girls Martha and Andrea converted two in beautiful fashion. The game had improved drastically in the second half and we came off smug, especially certain players who were insistent we had drawn, we hadn’t however, the final score was 3-2 to the Mile End crew.

Wednesday evening proved to be highly successful from a hockey club point of view, with the women’s and men’s first teams going out for dinner prior to the tuns. All this meant was an increased consumption of alcohol and a little bit too much banter! Firstly I have to give special mention to all those people on the no.38 bus on Wednesday night who watched in amazement as certain members of both the public and the AU sang Lion King classics as we drove down Theobalds Road, thanks Simba. Anyway back to the hockey, we arrived in the tuns in record numbers and started putting down the vodkas before our beautiful club rendition of Gina Gee’s ‘Oo Ah Just A Little Bit’, thanks to men’s captain Frodo. A few more vodka’s were drunk and we were ready for Walkabout, as per usual we managed to lose half our team en route but were surprised to find almost the entire men’s team there on arrival which made an evening full of tears, sick and hilarious chatting up techniques even more enjoyable. How someone managed to actually throw up on what seems like half the female population of the AU however is another question. So the evening progressed and Martha our postgrad had the double bonus of not just football club captain Taffy trying to chat her up but second team captain Brummie too, the lucky girl! Admittedly we thought the evening couldn’t get much funnier but again we were proved wrong by the Jade who had earlier complained about the fines being placed on her, all I can say is she more than doubled them.

So the night ended with a record 6 hockey members still in Walkabout at 3am, Rob and Rich had done the boys proud, all that is left for them now is that first virgin trip to Crispy Duck where I learnt neither SU Treasurer Pirate or Football Treasurer Al can count. So all in all a triumphant night for hockey, now all we have to do is keep it up.