The league champions suffer more cup woes

LEAGUE heavyweights Investec Colombians suffered two shock defeats on the opening day of the Investec Men's Division One Knockout Cup. On Saturday, the big boys of local hockey lost both their matches, firstly to Clubhouse Unwantables and then to Mosgrove Yobbos whereas their league rivals, Isabel Beavers, won both theirs.

In fact, it was no real surprise that Colombians had a shocker as for some reason they have never been a great cup side and that is something that their new goalkeeper, Andy Good, acknowledges.

'I don't know why we are a bad cup team,' said Good.

'I've not played for Colombians too long but in the league we usually start off quickly and it's quite annoying that we don't transfer that to the cup.

'I suppose other teams just want to do well against us in the shorter game.'

In the cup, the halves are only 15 minutes long with a three-minute break at half-time.

Against Unwantables, Colom-bians went 1-0 down to a Dan Slimm strike from a short corner.

They came back to equalise thanks to a trademark short-corner drag flick from their island striker, TJ Ozanne, but another Slimm short-corner hit gave the blacks a 2-1 victory.

The Yobbos' defeat was more clear-cut as they lost 3-1. Yobbos' Nick Chambers bagged himself a hat-trick which was kicked off by a short-corner goal.

Ozanne again equalised for Colombians with another drag flick and Yobbos keeper Adrian Gidney, who is equally adapt at playing in goal at football having just signed for Priaulx league leaders Bels, pulled off a wonder save to deny Ozanne at yet another short corner.

The whites went on to take the lead in quite contentious circumstances as Chris de Putron awarded them a penalty flick after Richard Radford was judged by the umpire to have touched the ball on the goal line with his foot.

The defender was adamant that it had hit his stick but it made no difference as Chambers had no problems in beating Good.

'Andy nearly caught the ball,' said Chambers afterwards, 'when it came back out of the goal.'

With Colombians now realising that they were on the rack, they went all guns blazing, but this was proved to be fruitless as Chambers got his third when he broke on the counter attack to find the back of the net with a reverse stick flick.

'It wasn't a very good day,' said Good afterwards.

'The first game was fairly even but Unwantables took it because of our defensive frailties and Yobbos deserved to win.'

The day started with Beavers easily overcoming Elizabeth College 5-0 as Barry Wallace got a hat-trick and Pierre Moody and Alexis Mansell grabbed the other goals.

Beavers went on to beat Unwantables as well and College fared better in their other game as they drew with Yobbos.

But Yobbos captain Steve Ward feels that his team should have come away with all the points.

He is also bullish about his team's chances of reaching the final after the next round of matches on Saturday 18 March despite Beavers winning both their opening-day games.

'We should have won against College,' he said.

'We were all over them but we just couldn't score. As for who are favourites for the tournament, I feel we are.

'We're very confident as the shorter game suits us. The way Beavers are playing at the moment, it is going to be a tight game when we play them.

'One win and we're through and we should do that. But we've been in this position before and we've let ourselves down.'