It has been a fantastic beginning to the season for Berko 2’s with an unbeaten start, even if an administration error suggested otherwise.

This meant 10/10/20 was a top of the table clash against Rickmansworth 1’s; Berko narrowly beat them last year but felt them snapping at our heels this year. The match started as a very close affair as you would imagine considering the close proximity of the teams in the table. The combination of youth, their own fast pitch and well drilled nature of our opponents was matched in equal measure by the experienced, wiley and physical Berko 2’s.

Unfortunately, it was the opposition who broke the deadlock with some fast interchange from their midfield that split Berko and resulted in a tap in by a Rickmansworth forward. This was shortly followed by a sucker punch as a brief individual moment of brilliance from one of the Rickmansworth players on the top of the D resulted in a low reverse stick shot just beating Haydn at his far post.

Berko regrouped harnessing all the leadership ingrained in the team by the likes of Jamie Holderness, Kraftty and bone crunching tackles from Tim Westley. Joel provided great stick skills out wide on the left, Dave English and Tom Moorhouse provided the dynamism in midfield. This was all topped off up front by the Payton duo, senior led from the front as always with his impeccable discipline smashing in a short to put Berko back in the game. Shortly before this astounding moment yours truly was sent to the bin for not obeying C19 rules so it’s my honour to carry on writing this fantastic story of blood, sweat and tears.

The battle continued with end to end hockey showing why both teams deserve to be challenging for promotion. It was nonetheless Ricki who scored next but was quickly counteracted by a patient pass to a consistently dynamic Will Goodwyn getting in front of his man and shooting past the sprawling Rickmansworth keeper marking the half time whistle 3-2.

After what could have been a soul searching halftime team talk for Berko we were in fact very positive making various decisions resulting in a better second half display. In the first half Berko came off second best but in the second half the opponents key players were marked out of the game. Dave dominated the center of the park; his central midfield partner Tom popped up with some magical stick skills and lashed in a goal that tied the scores.

It would have been a fair result if the match finished there but lady luck was not smiling on Berko…

With 2 minutes to go Berko conceded 2 goals. Yours truly takes full responsibility for the second but I know we can take many positives from this game. As a team we learnt more about ourselves in this last game than we did in all the preceding matches and we’ll come back stronger to gain promotion!!!