Aylesbury 1s win convincingly at Slough

Aylesbury mens 1s travelled to Slough for their week 4 fixture. Slough had yet to pick up a point this season however, Slough had become somewhat of a ‘bogy team’ for Aylesbury in recent year so they knew they would have to bring their ‘A’ game. Having lost Austin Greenlee and Andrew McIntyre to work commitments, men’s 1s also lost Matt Kiely and Daniel Lindars to Injury. Tim Atcheson and Josh Tomlinson were brought back into the ones for this week’s fixture.

An extended warmup lasting an hour as both teams waited for one of the umpires to turn up. The game finally started half an hour after the original start time. This did not seem to have affected Aylesbury who enjoyed a lot of the possession in the opening plays of the game. It was not long before Jake Hodgins found himself at the top of the D and rifled a reverse stick shot back across the Slough keeping and into the net to give Aylesbury an early lead.

Straight from when Aylesbury took the lead, Slough began to come back into the game and created a couple of chances to get back onto level terms. The best chance was when a ball was crashed into the D and deflected of Ben Ireson’s foot right into the path of the Slough forward with only Stephen Best in goal to beat but he put the shot wide of the left post. A succession of short corners were well defender by Graham Thwaites and then Stephen Best. Aylesbury did create chances to stretch their lead before half time. Jake Hodgins fired a good chance wide and good work from Josh Tomlinson and Chris Hunter to get passed the Slough goalkeeper only to be stopped by the Slough defence on the goal line.

The Second half began with Slough getting a lot more of the ball than in the first half. However Aylesbury soaked up a lot of the early pressure in the second half and was a neatly worked counter attack that saw Jake Hodgins double the lead and his goal tally for the day. Moments later, another good counter attack from Aylesbury saw Iain McLean draw the foul from the Slough Keeper and a Penalty stroke was awarded which was coolly slotted away by Chris Hunter for his first goal of the season.

Aylesbury’s chance of a third clean sheet out of four was whipped out when a ball was crashed from the centre back all the way through to the top of the D where Mark Bowes could not get the ball under control which fell to the Slough forward who pushed the ball round Best in goal and slot the ball into the empty goal. Aylesbury were down to ten men when Chris Hunter was caught using naughty language by the umpire.

Aylesbury completed the win with a well worked move which fell to Iain McLean who slotted the ball pass the Keeper for his first goal of the season. An Inspired change by Jaypee Wentzel to play McLean as a forward rather than his usual defensive role really paid off.
Aylesbury have now taken 8 points from 4 games with 2 wins and 2 draws. Next week Phoenix and Ranelagh visit RAF Halton where Aylesbury will look to continue their undefeated start to the season