Ottery and Sidmouth 2

Okehampton 3

OKEHAMPTON opened their campaign with a tricky trip to Sidmouth to face a hockey team who were two leagues above them this time last year.

Not intimidated by the hosts the visitors started positively. creating a couple of half chances which the home sides goalkeeper saved easily.

The home side opened the scoring with a well worked move which resulted in the visitors suffering a blow when Joff Stephens pulled up with a quad injury but he struggled through the pain to complete the game and help his fellow team mates. The injury forced the away side to restructure their line up with captain Mark Parsons dropping back to play deep in the midfield, he managed to pick out Hayden Bond and he calmly struck the ball past the keeper to open the scoring.

The balance of play swung from side to side and neither team created anymore chances before the half time whistle went.

The ten men started brightly in the second half and looked solid at the back, Will Cooper and Luke Liversidge both took heavy blows from raised balls but struggled through and were exceptional in defence along with keeper Andy Harvey and fellow defender Jonny Aylen.

Andy Strong then took centre stage as Oke worked the ball out of defence through Aylen and Simon Bourne to find Stephens; he passed to Strong, who beat a defender efore placing his shot into the bottom corner.

The hosts rallied and a few short corners followed leading to an equaliser with ten minutes to go. Okehampton's Sam Whalley and Luke Miller pushed forward to support Strong and it paid off as a counter attack saw them get the winner. Liversidge found Parsons who played the ball wide to Miller via Bourne and Miller sieved his way through three defenders and played the ball back across goal to find Strong who placed his shot into the roof of the net.

This was a battling display in adversity from Okehampton.