Woking 3
Guernsey 1 (Clapham)
Having been drawn away to Woking, one of the highest-ranked sides in the competition, the Greens knew they would have to be at their best to keep their run going in the national knockout after winning on the road at Ashford in the first round.
However, on Saturday they had to overcome more than just quality opposition as their red-eye flight to Southampton was diverted to Bristol, resulting in a two-and-a-half-hour drive once they had landed and a very quick turnaround once they arrived at the pitch for a match that eventually got under way a couple of hours later than scheduled.
Guernsey coach Steve Eulenkamp did not use it as an excuse, though.
‘It was a long day due to travel disruption, which was not ideal, but it is part of living in Guernsey isn’t it?’ he said.
‘We adapted well and took the right attitude, which was just to get on with the hockey. We showed we are very adaptable and people performed well despite less than ideal preparation.
‘As it turned out, one of the positives of the long morning was that we were not hanging around at the ground waiting for the game to start. As soon as we got there, we got warmed up, switched on really quickly to the job in hand and came out flying.
‘We played some really nice hockey, putting what we had been working on in training into practise, which was really pleasing, and I think we took them by surprise.’
Guernsey capitalised on that positive start by taking the lead midway through the first quarter.
The goal was well constructed from back to front with Charlie Clapham getting into the D to finish off the move.
Guernsey held that advantage until half-time and were in a confident frame of mind at that stage, but they also expected a response from Woking.
It came and the home side were level early in the second half.
The game remained close, though, and Guernsey were sticking to their task.
That became harder when Matt Stokes succumbed to an injury with the best part of 25 minutes remaining. Not only had the Greens lost their captain, Eulenkamp was also hampered in his ability to give midfielders a break, which meant added workload on the likes of Zak Damarell and Sean Donaldson.
Eventually the pressure told on Guernsey and Woking scored twice in the final quarter to progress to the third round.
‘The chat at half-time was about keeping the game simple, sticking to the basics and having pride in our defence... three minutes later we found ourselves at 1-1,’ Eulenkamp said.
‘But we knew Woking were going to be a good side and the gist of what we talked about at half-time was maintaining the level we had been at in the first half, which I think we did for most of the third quarter. That was when we started coming under pressure.
‘To be fair, Woking have some really tidy players, they were strong at the basics and they just had a little too much for us in the end.
‘The loss of Matt was unfortunate and also meant not having the ability to rotate, which asks a lot of others to carry us through, but it’s just one of those things.
‘Overall, we played brilliantly, but everyone recognised afterwards that we perhaps ran out of steam towards the end.’
The result aside, Eulenkamp took plenty of positives from the performance with the inter-insular in Jersey in March the next major target for his squad.
‘The Woking manager said we had given them one of their hardest games of the season – and they are still unbeaten in their league. They play at the top level of those sides eligible for the Tier Two competition and are third in what I believe is the strongest division at that level, so that is an indication of the level we performed at,’ said the Guernsey coach.
‘There were good performances all around, but I thought Zak coming back from injury played really well in linking from back to front through the midfield – he stood out.
‘I was also really impressed with young George Moakes on debut in one of the hardest games we will play and Louis Day made some good saves to get our man of the match.’
The Island squad are due to be in action again in the annual Nomads clash on Saturday 27 December, but while Eulenkamp called it a ‘really good game to play in’, several regulars will be unavailable.
In the new year, the squad will turn their attention to defending the inter-insular trophy at Les Quennevais.
‘Hopefully we will have a game between now and March, but at the moment we are planning on 10 weeks of training with some in-house matches and the focus now will be looking back on the video of the weekend, seeing where we were strong and where we can improve,’ the coach said.
‘The trajectory we are on from Ashford [in the first round] is a steep upwards curve and we want to continue that to the inter-insular. We are looking forward to that now and if we play against Jersey the way we did against Woking, we will give them a really good game.’
GUERNSEY SQUAD
Ball, Clapham, J Culverwell, M Culverwell, Damarell, Day, Donaldson, Dyson, Mansell, Moakes, Nightingale, Peacegood, Still, Stokes, Taylor.
