First Home Game of the Season Brings 3 Points

Henley arrived at Jubilee Park for their first home game of the season after an impressive win the previous week against Barnes HC. With Jonny Taylor providing some inspirational music from the dressing room, the manager gave some brief but potent words of wisdom in his pre-match speech. The Henley team walked confidently to the pitch knowing a win would see them maintain their strong start to the league season.

The visitors began strongly, their youthful team moving around quite rapidly, finding a number of precision passes to put the Henley defence under some early pressure. Henley rallied and began to find their feet, making some good passes and incisive runs to stun the visiting team. However, with Henley failing to find the net early it was Eastbourne who found the net first. A quick move through the middle found one of the Eastbourne’s forwards who was able to slide the ball under the advancing Cox for the first goal. Henley sprung into life and before long a great passing exchange between Foster and Joseph saw Foster neatly fire the ball into the goal. The visitors responded quickly and a probing pass found one of their forwards unmarked who finished well past the outstretched hand of Cox. Henley, playing the slightly better passing game, again pushed deep on to the baseline and a precise cross found Joseph with an easy tap in to make it 2-2 at halftime.

The second half started a little scratchy for the home team but once into their stride things began to click. A number of chances were created, but the ball ended up missing by inches or was saved by their goalkeeper. The game became quite tense and it was inevitable that emotions would boil over. Henley were first to lose a man to the sin bin when Mortimer was wrongly fouled and then sort retribution in the following tackle. Eastbourne then received a yellow card when one of their players forgot he was playing hockey and decided to take a swift kick at Tom Walter that even Wayne Rooney would have been pleased with. During this, Henley were able to score a third goal from a penalty corner, dispatched by David Ralph with such class that will see him licking his lips at every penalty corner from here on out.

With emotions still running high, Rhys Joyce sadly pulled up after chasing down a ball with a hamstring problem and Chris Green trying to make up for Joyce’s injury, made a bad challenge and found himself taking a five minute rest. However, this only spurred the home team on and when Green re-entered the pitch a stray shot found Taylor diving in at the far post to make it four goals. Man of the match, Ed Hughes-Burns, made some solid defensive tackles towards the end to keep the visitors at bay.

Overall, a good, solid performance from Henley who will now look forward to their early game next week against locals, Marlow.