4-1: M6s vs Giffnock 2s (WD4) - 12/11/22

SUPER 6’s DEVELOPING WELL!

Hillhead 6’s travelled to Eastwood High School to meet Giffnock 2’s for their 6th match of the 22/23 season, keen to build on their previous weeks 4-0 win against Clydesdale 5’s.

This is a young Development Squad this year with a new Captain (David Hedley), new Team Manager (Ewan McKenzie) and the majority of boys are new to men’s hockey too but the team bring buckets full of enthusiasm to every match which has allowed for the team to have a positive start to the season!

The match started positively with Hillhead applying pressure from the push back.  Lots of linked play allowed for exciting moments in Giffnock’s D and their defence were kept on their toes.  This continued pressing within Giffnock’s half resulted in a short corner that was perfectly executed and finished with a top D strike from Remi Zante slotting into the bottom left corner.  1-0 Hillhead.

Hillhead continued their productive start and kept the pressure on Giffnock with a number of opportunities arising from great work on the wings leading to base line attacks.  One of these plays led to some brilliant linking work down the right hand side between a positive partnership of Sam Johnson and Gregor Hedley resulting in the ball being fed into the D where the passing play of Logan MacAuley and Amar Sagoo (fresh from his superb top D to top right corner goal the previous week!) had the defenders and GK unsure of where the ball was going to end up!  This passing sequence found Toby Stevens at right post where he received the ball and was able to gently roll it in for Hillhead’s 2nd goal.

Giffnock, now 2 goals down, pressed harder and tried the high press on a number of occasions but the defence, including former 6’s Player of the Season 2021-2022 Alasdair Fisher, new Left Back Struan Arnott and guest GK, Jamie McDonald, saw to it that nothing came of their attacks.

Near half time Hillhead’s continued linking play and pressure within Giffnocks half paid dividend with a great reverse strike from Logan MacAuley to give Hillhead their 3rd goal of the match.  Half time came with Hillhead leading 3-0.

After a few changes from both teams at half time, Giffnock came out strong and made a number of attacks early on into the second half.  GK Jamie McDonald was strong and forceful in these moments, allowing for Hillhead to maintain their 3-0 lead, for the moment.  The pressure continued from Giffnock which finally resulted in them finding an opportunity to slot one in to make the score 3-1.

At the point of losing a goal it is very easy for any team to lose momentum, lower the heads and lose their focus but our young, enthusiastic and committed team dug deep and worked even harder to regain control of the game.  Matthew Dodson covered every inch of midfield to move the ball about effectively and very soon Hillhead found themselves pressing on Giffnock’s D once again.  A number of attacks continued with Hillhead coming very close to scoring more goals, including shots from Cameron Mackay, who was causing problems for Giffnock at the top of their D, and from Charlie Hamilton who had some right D shots thwarted by Giffnock defence.  Hillhead’s 4th and final goal of the day came from another result of players working well together to move the ball about effectively with Sam Brett knocking in.  The sound of the ball hitting the backboard was followed by rapturous applause from our strong travelling support and cheers of celebration from Sam and his team mates.

With limited time remaining, Giffnock threw everything forward, but hard as they tried they couldn’t penetrate the Hillhead defence, in particular, Ethan Murrison in Right Back, who had clearly built a brick wall in his area as nothing was getting past him!

The clock ran down with the score finishing 4-1, a great win for the young Hillhead 6’s. 

The team now look forward to next Saturday where they travel to Western Wildcats and hope to build on their two back to back wins and their current top of the league position.