Southern one

Duchy 4

Okehampton 2

WITH the festive break over, Okehampton hockey team travelled to Redruth on Saturday to take on a Duchy team pushing for promotion.

With their Oke’s number one goalkeeper out due to injury and no spare one, up stepped captain Brett Lawson to play in goal for the the first time in a league match.

The game started off well for a Oke side, who only had four first team players in it from last year.  With only five minutes in Stuart Jarvis put the away side in front with a long range pass from R Thomas across the D; the ball found its way to Jarvis, who sneaked in behind the last defender and coolly slotted the ball into the back of the net. 

This was a wake up call for Duchy who had chances to equalise but good defending from Oke’s Simon Bourne, Mark Bingham and Alex Osman initially kept these out.

However, 10 minutes before the end of the first half Duchy had worked out the keeper, Brett Lawson, was not a regular between the posts, and slotted three goals past him. All but one were good strikers’ goals and the other was a deflection, which Lawson had no chance of reacting to as the first half finished 3-1 to Duchy.

At the start of the second half both sides had a stream of penalty corners; from one of these Alex Osman took a ball to the eye.

Oke kept their goal clean in the second half due to some keeper skills  from Lawson. 

With the ball bouncing back and forth Jarvis and Speak made good runs. Goal chances came from Watson and Lloyd, with one ending up in a penalty corner. A well worked routine drag flick put the away side back on the score sheet to make it 2-3. 

Filled with confidence after previous saves Oke’s inexperienced keeper decided to move off his line for a one on one with a Duchy striker - who rounded Lawson to make it 4-2. 

Just before the end Oke’s Jack Watson scored what he thought was his third goal of the season only to be disallowed by the umpire who ruled the ball went off the byline before it was put in the goal. 

Despite the defeat Okehampton did well with a weakened side.