This was the tournament that we had re-arranged the regionals at Farnborough to attend – and left the Juniors short of their playing up youth. But this was to help us prepare for the Nationals so it was worth it

The tournament started at 5:00 in the afternoon on the Saturday and continued all day Sunday. Because of the late start, we had a pre-tournament ‘last supper’ at the Pizza hut. This was the first stage in our gruelling refuelling schedule !

The Eversley centre is a sports centre tucked away down a residential street, and not easy to find. Nobody got too lost, so we arrived in good time and in good spirits. The lads did a team jog around the football pitch and adjusted themselves to the game ahead.

The tournament had two groups that looked very unbalanced. Group A had the Redditch Rockets, Basildon Bulldogs, the Enforcers and the hosts – the Titans. Our Group B had Borehamwood, Vikings and Leasowe sharks. We definitely had the tougher group.

Our first match was against Borehamwood. We came out fighting, but still managed to go 3-0 down in the first half. The second half we won 1-0 , but with only 10 minutes each way in these preliminaries, we didn’t get a chance to make up the score. We lost 3:1.

Our second game was against the Vikings. The Vikings were very strong having three guest players from Swindon.. We fought well, but couldn’t get more than one ball past their Goalie. We lost 3:1.

Our third and final match of the first day was against Leasowes Sharks and the infamous Tonks clan. At our last Tournament, Doc had his teeth chipped by a vicious cross check attack from Dino Tonks – our club’s favourite player. What a nice lad he is. Today, Easy made Dino look silly. Easy popped in three goals and we were in the lead mid game. Andrew did a lovely ‘Indians’ move that somehow their goalie managed to block. We were really motoring, But Leasowes managed to put 4 goals into the net verses our three. Last time we met, we went down 6:0, so we are getting better – maybe next time (Nationals?) we will beat them.

That was the end of the first day, and we all retired back to the Campanile Hotel. Our first game the next morning was at 10:00 so we arrived at 9:10 to find the whole centre locked up. How were they supposed to keep to schedule if the place wasn’t going to open till 10:00?

Our first game on Sunday was against the Redditch Rockets. Redditch had come out top in their group, and only conceded 1 goal on the Saturday! We played well in the first half, but we seemed evenly matched. In the second half we pulled ahead and our confidence grew. We then popped in two more to make the final score 7:3 to us. We had come last in our group, yet easily beaten the top in the other group. That’s how unbalanced the groupings were. Now we just had to turn yesterday’s scores around. If we win the next game we would be in the finals.

Our next game was against Borehamwood, the team we met at the start of the tournament. This time we were allowed 15 minutes each way. The first half, we went down 2:0, but our spirits never dropped. Second half, we pulled one back. We then had a goal disallowed for reasons that no one could understand (high stick shown by the refs), Borehamwood wanted desperately to hold on to their lead by whatever means and took the ball into a corner and held it there. That is a penalty in the last two minutes and we had about three seconds left on the clock! The refs called a penalty. Easy was to do it. The number of times Aldie had drilled the lads to perfect a penalty move for just such an eventuality and now Easy had to take it. He pushed the ball up confidently, dummied the goalie and popped the ball in. EASY. We went barmy ……Three seconds later the final whistle blew 2:2. We now had to play 5 minutes extra time. We battled it out, but no side dominated, and no goals resulted. That meant a penalty shoot out.

This was a shoot out to decide who went into the Finals! We had lost all games the first day and now we were having a penalty shoot out for the finals..! Doc went first and missed. They went and missed. Joe went and looked like he scored – the goalie caught it in his glove behind the line – but it was disallowed. They missed. Easy went – he missed. They went and scored. It was down to David. He went and scored…but, it was disallowed because the Goalie had moved out of his crease too early (– the goalie commits a foal and we loose out?) David went again but missed. They went and scored, and that was it, Borehamwood went to the final by the skin of their teeth.

At this point we felt that we had won our tournament, the team were floating on air – the next game seemed a formality – so rather than play it to win, we decided to allow every one the same court time and to enjoy themselves. This was against the Vikings again (3:1 down on Saturday). But hey, we were not only enjoying it, but actually holding them. At the end of two 10 minute periods the score was 2:2 and we were into extra time again. We decided to try to play to win and go for it. Having now set our minds on winning, we then went down two goals very quickly and lost 4:2 at the end of extra time – there is a moral there somewhere.

Unfortunately, having only 2 x 10min periods and three lines to play, many of the team didn’t get as much time as they could have handled and many felt disgruntled. It was a shame to leave on that note after the high of the previous game – but hey – that’s hockey.

We watched Leasowes work hard to get a 2:0 win against Borehamwood and win the tournament.

We have some work to do before the Nationals, but we were just one goal away from the finals – we have shown that we can cut it against the best in the country. We just need that extra edge to get to the front. Come on the Tornadoes.

Richard.