Clifton Robinsons travelled to Fareham on Sunday, hoping to continue their successful start to the season. Fareham, originally known as Ferneham, was listed in the Domesday Book as having 90 households, and has since blossomed into a major market town, tucked between the more dominant conurbations of Portsmouth and Southampton.
On their way to the game, the team decided that McDonalds would provide the necessary nutrition for this rag-tag bunch of minor league sportsmen. Stocked up with processed pork and eggs of dubious origin, the team arrived at Fareham Hockey Club in high spirits, and with even higher cholesterol. The less said about the subsequent nil-nil stalemate the better.
IIt was a tale of two goalies. Clifton forced the home keeper into a single save (a shot to miles-travelled ratio of 1 to 222). In contrast, Andy Hughes put in a balletic display. It is hard to do justice to his performance, but comparisons were soon drawn with Harry Potter’s remarkable agility and reactions during the Triwizard Tournament, when he ducked and weaved to evade the clutches of the Hungarian Horntail. There were even some suggestions from the partisan fans that Andy’s dominance of the ‘D’ was comparable with the young Potter’s own mastery of the Chamber of Secrets. Whatever the analogy, the Clifton goalie should be applauded for the cleanest of clean sheets.
Other notable moments in the day included a second trip to the salubrious Tot Hill services for the misleadingly-named ‘fun bus’ home. A handful of the players were guilty of celebrating their hard-fought draw with a visit to Mbargos, but the full account of that part of the day is not for this forum. Suffice to say the venue struggled to live up to it’s audacious claim to be ‘consistently busy 7 nights a week’. We go again.
Tom Appleby
