Match Report: City Claims Regional Bronze

Oxford City vs Cardiff Raptors - 19.03.16
28-9 Win (but officially a default by Raptors)

The final game of the season was in our home-away-from-home in Aldershot. The Gaz Express delivered its passengers ready to start scoring straight from car to pitch and James and Amy did just that with a quick two goals. 

Cardiff Raptors had brought their own Jo and she answered our goals bringing Raptors back level. James's division was back scoring but as we switched ends again Raptors scored once again. Frank called an early time out and was not best pleased with our defence and our structure in attack.

Back on pitch we really started to play well. Dan intercepted the ball countless times. All the boys were leaping over the half way line to prevent the ball ever reaching the Raptors attack. James scored a shot with the ball fully balancing on the edge of the korf before choosing to go in. The game was all Oxford City and the hardest thing was choosing the best shot to take. 

Unfortunately, the Raptors's James ran our James into the feed and in the mess of collision went down with very painful-looking cramp. The rest of the half, our James did sterling work as a non-shooter and Gaz had some shooting practice with a defender who just didn't want to stay on him.

At half time we were 13 goals clear and were offered the choice of continuing to play against seven or accept the default and let a ringer on for Raptors. 

After over-analysing our fairly slim hopes of ending up second in the league we choose the fun option of eight versus eight. So the second half started with us already as winners but we all still wanted some goals. Niall made his long awaited regional reappearance and got a hat trick in just a half. James got an equally impressive double hat trick and, in fact, seven out ten players scored three or more goals. Wow!

In the end, a victory but not enough to move us up it to second place. Thanks to Ailith for her mastery of the score sheet and Frank for coaching us in our best regional season. Well played everyone. Let's build on this next year!

That evening Nick was awarded the Oxford City MVP 2015-16 and hopefully the trophy survived his house party. Thanks for having us Nick it was a great party.

MVP - Jo

Scorers - James (6), Amy (4), Alice (3), Niall (3), Ruth (3), Dan (3), Dave (3), Gaz (2), Jo