Southport 5 - Bowdon Killer Bee's 3

Still early in the season and the hibernating Bees had not quite woken up yet. A very strong side made it's way over to Southport in some fine autumnal sunshine, but various navigational mishaps resulted in the game starting late with players drip feeding into the match over the first 15 minutes. Having got lost myself & narrowly avoided being late, I won't mention any names... Except Yokker's.

Some major talent was on the pitch representing the Bees, and before the whistle started things off every indication was that we were going to anihilate Southport. Despite some flashes of individual wizardry within the team, it would be fair to say that nobody had a good game all the way through, and we did not settle as a team at all during the match.

There was much shaking of heads & tutting as we left the pitch after the final whistle, amidst signs of immense personal frustration amongst the team, and many muttered 'must get to training' comments! A weaker side would have been content with their performance against Southport, who had proved to be made of sterner stuff than we'd thought, however the result reflected the game well enough and ultimately they played better hockey than we did. The only sour note being the oppo's fourth goal which they kicked in, which seemed a little unecessary as they were two goals up at the time (mind you, for the next few minutes the defence got to barrack the unfortunate umpire, Sam Jackson, who had apparently experienced a 'zen moment' despite only being about ten feet away from the incident at the time, so it wasn't all bad!)

So, the Bees were not up to swarming yet and may of us still had our pre-season demons intact as we walked off the pitch. Everyone knew what they had done wrong & everyone was raring for another game to prove to themselves, if nobody else that they were a lot better than that!

In fact, three of us went off to do just that for the Wasps, where Yokker & Murdie demonstrated that they play a lot better against Bowdon than for Bowdon! Hmmm...

'Q'