LX Red v ISCA Over 50s
Sunday 27th November

After an excellent warm up led by John Benson, his bass and jazz band, LX were treated to bright Devon sunshine in their annual fixture with ISCA Hockey Club Over 50s. LX began brightly with good moves down both wings from which a penalty corner resulted. A well worked move led to Harris feeding Muller who placed the ball well to give the LX an early lead. Slowly the ISCA side started to move the ball well and started to test the LX defence; they found, though, Watson, Muller and Ewing in good form at full back and Goodridge in goal was in confident form twice saving well from close range.
LX continued to play some fluent hockey, Stokes and Grinham found space down the flanks and with Perryman, Harris and Lucas in midfield generally dictating play, more goals seemed likely. Denison and Hopkins were a constant threat down the wings with their pace and tricky skills very much in evidence.
In the second half, LX was handicapped by losing Lucas through injury. Both teams took a while to settle, play became scrappy and became rather disjointed. However, the ever threatening Bolina was linking up more and more with Hopkins and Denison and created excellent chances to add to the score. Grinham found considerable space to link up with Harris and Perryman as LX pressed for a further goal. Eventually the elusive Hopkins gave Harris the chance to score well from the edge of the circle. There were though still some occasional attacks from ISCA,
Goodridge again saved well but LX thoroughly deserved their win in a very open contest.

LX Red were based on the victorious team from Neuss; thanks go to Mark Watson for his leadership on the
pitch, to Mike Harris for his excellent culinary skills, to the vocal crowd enjoying the late autumn sunshine and a
huge thank you to Bill Goodridge for an excellent evening at the Langstone Cliff Hotel with good food, music and
company.