Cup Final Report - Fixtures Live

Sheffield 'Steel' the title.........

If you were at Southgate HC on Sunday 9th March, I hope you enjoyed the game. I know I certainly did. Firstly the thank yous. Southgate, made us feel welcome from when we first arrived and provided us with excellent facilities. Sandy for driving us down there. The Sheffield Exec for supporting us in our cup exploits, I'm sure there are more, you know who you are so feel free to feel good!

Well we were back. 12 months on from our last final appearance and there were several questions to be answered the most important being "Could we go one further?"

Unlike last year when we went into a 2-0 lead at half time, we 'decided' to give a much better Southgate side a 3-0 lead. In the first half we didn't really generate any clear cut chances, but Southgate had 4 or 5 good chances, and scored 3. But for long periods of the half we were putting on the pressure, but not getting anywhere.

A chance to for Lewis Butcher to put things right. We then set about grinding out a result! Ben Farrar stepped up first popping a PC in, now we began to feel alive, and the crowd seemed some what less noisy.

Then we did the unthinkable, Nick Sims, limped of the bench and scored 2 of the most important goals of his life. We also had a PC on the final whistle, but were enjoying ourselves so much that we thought we'd play another 15 minutes.

Extra time flew by and we were in the lottery of strokes. Out of the first bank of 5, ours were not the most confident of strokes, but we scored 4. It went down the the final one and it needed to be save dto take it into Sudden Death. Saved.

Then up stepped Jon Bray, England Veteran and probably the oldest player on the pitch, goal. Then it was all down to Mark Wilson in the net to grab the title for Sheffield. Saved, cue the celebrations.

Commiserations to Southgate, who I think were technically a stronger side than Sheffield, but the Sheffield boys played with passion and pride and refused to lay down and eventually came out the winners.