Henley lose out to Old Cranleighans

Henley took some confidence into the game following a positive result against Oxford University last weekend and knew that there were 3 points up for grabs today if they could get off to a good start. Things started brightly and Henley made several good chances, but failed to make any count with the OC goalkeeper producing some good saves to keep the score at 0 – 0. Henley continued to press, but could not get the short corners firing and it wasn’t until half way through the first half that the first goal was seen. Some good build up play on the right hand side from Hibberd and Heaver lead to the former firing a ball across the D for Green to convert into the roof of the net. Green has been in impressive form of late and will have been happy to add to his goal tally with this one presented to him on a plate. It seemed the momentum was entirely in Henley’s favour and Joyce and Foster were in complete control in the middle of the park.

OC didn’t give the Cox a lot to do in goal, but did look dangerous on the counter and that became very apparent when a speculative aerial out of defence was allowed to bounce in the Henley D, and the OC attacker did well to flick it past the onrushing Cox to the despair of the Henley defence who had been watertight up until that point. From that point on the game became end to end, and the best chance for Henley fell to Walter. After carrying the ball over half the pitch and past several defenders with a jinking run, he looked to set up Green for the finish. However, Green opted to square a difficult, bouncing ball back to Walter who did well to even get a stick on it but unfortunately the ball rolled wide of the goal. With at least 3 defenders on the line, plus the goalkeeper, it would have been hard to convert such a tough opportunity anyway.

The end to end hockey continued for the rest of the half and Henley clearly didn’t learn from the first goal, as OC managed to fire a long range pass into the D and a clever flick took the ball past Cox to give OC an unjustified 2-1 lead going into half time.

The second half continued in much the same way, with the OC striker missing an absolute sitter only to recover shortly after for yet another tap in from a long ball into the Henley D. Henley continued to push forward and saw lots of possession but just couldn’t covert until late in the game, when Green was in the right place to flick a loose ball into the roof of the net with a few minutes remaining.

Despite putting heavy pressure on the OC defence, Henley struggled to create any clear opportunities and the full time whistle came too soon. Henley will have felt like they should have got something out of the game and will be looking to recover from this set back next week with a difficult game against Milton Keynes, who are just above them in the table.