MINEHEAD & West Somerset Hockey Club’s third team met Bridgwater 4s at home for their third meeting of the season, having won one match and lost one game against each other so far.

Minehead were able to field a strong side for the match and were confident from the very start. However, Bridgwater were also able to put out a good team with a combination of youth and experience which would test the Minehead side.

After making the Bridgwater keeper work hard for the first ten minutes of the match, Minehead opened the scoring with a trademark chip from top D by Max followed shortly by another from Will Reed.

Bridgwater took the impetus from the reset, however, and caught Minehead off guard to make it 2-1 and showed they were very much still in the game. Minehead finished the first half playing some good open hockey and Richard Churchill snapped up his first goal of the season to put the home side two goals to the good at the interval

Playing the second half with a brisk cross wind made it harder work for both sides to keep the ball moving but Minehead had a taste for the win at this point and another goal by Churchill, and one from Ben Moody, put Minehead firmly in front.

Bridgwater played to a good standard throughout the second half and were a good test for the home team, attacking hard up through the centre, managing another goal and a shot well saved by Adrian Bagg in goal. Further scoring by Will and Max gave an emphatic final score of 8-2 to the home side and a well-earned win.

The Minehead & West Somerset Club’s men’s first team travelled away to Sidmouth and Ottery on a Saturday looking to hold their lead at the top of the table.

Travelling away with a bare 11 for the second week in a row, and with a few central players out, three points would be hard to come by, especially against a side who are normally well coached.

Starting with a never-before-seen centre back pairing Minehead definitely had to ease themselves into the game, and despite Nick Jones scoring early on the travellers struggled to settle and Sidmouth and Ottery scored from a short corner to level the scores.

Minehead grew into the half and began finding some width in attack which yielded results as Mark Bolton scored for the visitors to make it 2-1 at half time.

The determined home side were not down and out however and continued to press the Minehead goal into the second half. The visitors continued to take their chances well despite dropping down to 10 men for a five minute period with skipper Claude Mahlich picking up a yellow card, and the goals continued to flow Nick Jones bagged two more to complete a hattrick, while Mark Bolton, Joe Notaro-Livingstone and Morris Burrough also found the back of the net. The final score of 7-1 to Minehead, however, this was not indicative of the close game that was played.

Lee Fairbrother made some great saves in the Minehead net to prevent the home side scoring more than one but Nick Jones was player of the match for his goal scoring prowess.