Three players pulled out of the Spencer 3’s squad on Saturday morning, leaving us short handed with only eight players. Not the best start to the day.

Captain, Colin Byrne, likes a challenge so he agreed with Northampton that we could play a 2-man offside, giving us 3 midfield players. So in settled play we played man-down defence and attack.

The Spencer (defensive) performance was outstanding. We inverted the defence thus put our long sticks nearer their shooters. This did mean more running for the midfield to get back but it worked and we frustrated Northampton for three quarters of the game

The few times we got the ball in attack, the soon came back as the three Northampton defensemen were all over our attack of Glen and Cliff. When we got into semi-settled attack, we were often too tired to pass or catch properly, thus gave it away to quickly. But we got into occasional good positions and got the odd shot off. This kept moral high and our day was capped off in the 3rd quarter with a Peter Compton long-stick goal.

Northampton worked out our defence strategy in the final quarter and a mini flood of goals made the scoreline respectable for them. We were barely able to walk by this time so it did not really matter.

On debut for Spencer today was Brenden Callan who played very well, starting as long-stick midfield and ending up with Cliff in attack. Spencer’s Man-of-the-match was a joint award to Colin Byrne in goal and Gavin Park in midfield. Gavin ran the most yards by miles and was super competitive at face-off.

Quarter Scores: 3-0 / 4-0 / 5-1 / 10-1

Spencer III’s were; Colin Byrne, Toby Rule, Peter Compton (1 goal), Brenden Callan, Gavin Park, Rob Gooch, Glen Gardener and Cliff Hide