Saturday 23rd Nov BAC take on old North league rivals Cirencester at Abbeywood.

Yet another cold and wet start to a match day. As the whistles sounded and the game began Ciren attacked with a high press, for the first 10 minutes it was relentless. BAC defence soaked up the majority of the attack until Ciren’s skilful number 8 broke into the D, striking and finding the top of the net with a shot BAC had to admire.

Shortly after that BAC found their feet, putting together some great attacks through Sledger, Emzy and Tinny with Holly, making some great runs down the right. We had a string of short corners but never quite finding the back of the net. Cirencester didn’t manage to score again in the first half as BAC’s press seemed to be working and the defensive marking was doing the job. BAC finished the first half with another penalty corner, everyone came up to try and level before half time. The short was taken short to Ruth an immediately back to Holly, sadly a Ciren player deflected the ball off the backline and the whistle was blown.

Darren gave us a good half time talk and we went back out onto the pitch ready to put up a fight. Ciren started as they had in the first with a high press but BAC were quicker to react and it was anyone’s game. There was a bit of end to end hockey, BAC missing narrowly on a few occasions and after about 20 minutes Cirencester managed to squeeze a cross in on the back post to bring the score to 2-0.

BAC had plenty more opportunities including more short corners, getting closer all the time. Sadly, when the full-time whistle blew it remained 2-0 to Cirencester.

Off back to Stapleton for delicious teas and the all important Player of the Match vote. This week was a draw between Holly and Sledger, Ruth coming 2nd and Helen, Dave, Tinny and PJ taking joint 3rd.

On to next weeks away game to play top of the table Swindon.