Pressure pays off as Finchfield defeat Sils at home.

Following back to back 7-1 victories, the M2s went into this fixture as favourites. Boosted by the return of Thomas Bacon, Max Levenger and George Bayliss following recent first team duty, on paper Sils were looking strong. There was a last minute injury blow to one of the club's inform players Kartik Kumar however, but with goals recently coming from all parts of the team, there was no lack of fire power. Matt Fell took on the management role for this game helping captain Mo Hadian run the team from the sideline and giving some valuable advice to help the team further develop.

On this cold but sunny afternoon, both teams started evenly but Finchfield had clearly come to spoil the party, looking more determined than Sils in the early stages. It was the experienced midfield players from Finchfield who started to dictate the pace of the game and with Sils looking unusually clumsy in the defence a series of short corners put the early pressure on the home side. Sam Howe and Millan Chauhan did what they can to stop the attacks early on but pressure finally paid off as Finchfield took the lead from one of their short corners, 1-0. Sils slowly managed to work their way back into the game and a good direct attack saw Adam Kent with a half chance from the right of the D but he could not capitalise when he decided to take on the shot, with Mo Hadian screaming for the return ball. Back at the other end, Finchfield continued to apply the pressure around the D and following a debated penalty corner, were able to double their advantage for 2-0. Sils made some attacking changes which saw the forward pairing of George Bayliss and Joe Houlcroft, supported by the attack minded Danny Nicoll who has been another of the Sils in-form players. Good link up play from this trio created Sils first penalty corner, with Nick Oppenheimer coming close to tapping in his second goal of the season. A few minutes later and another corner, and although Sils couldn't set up the direct strike, the ball was worked into the danger zone from the right but with Danny Nicoll and Luke Kent pressing on, Finchield somehow kept the ball out. With Sils showing their best spell of the game the goal finally arrived. Joe Houlcroft turned well on the right wing and managed to cut the ball back for Mo Hadian who found a yard of space to turn and and the send the ball goal wards with a push shot. With help of a deflection from a Finchfield stick the keeper was wrong footed and it was back to 2-1. Mo Hadian taking full credits as he moves to 8 goals in as many games so far this season. Moments later things could have been back level, this time George Bayliss creating himself a half chance to get a shot on goal on his reverse stick, the keeper made the initial save and it was the Finchfield defender who managed to deflect Mo Hadian's rebound sweep over the bar to keep the away team on top at half time.

Sils knew what they had to do in the second half, communicate better, to cut out the basic mistakes and get the ball moving around quicker. However Finchfield had other ideas and kept themselves better organised than Sils. They applied a very tight and effective press on the Sils defence which made it difficult to transfer the ball out of the half. With mistakes creeping in once again Sils gave the ball away too many times in their own half. Brindley Jones was called into action to make a couple of important saves to keep Sils in the game. Joe Schuppler and Matthew Deakin worked hard throughout the game looking to support the attackers. Danny Nicoll and Adam Kent did manage to penetrate to the baseline a couple of times but the final ball just couldn't be found to create a clear cut chance. Mo Hadian didn't look at his sharpest best today when despite some good dribbling he could not get his shots on target when he did reach the D on a couple of occasions. Some important tackles in defence by Millan Chauhan and Tom Bacon held Finchfield off but the pressure eventually paid off when the away team showed Sils how it should be done - tight pressing to win the ball back from 16, short passing to the nearest player and a clinical finish on the reverse stick into the net for 3-1. From there Sils never really recovered. Finchfield passed the ball around much better and kept their shape and with the Luke Kent and other Sils' forwards getting frustrated at not seeing the ball they started to come back in the defence to pick up for a dribble. When chances came again it was too little too late, but Sils should have cut the deficit to 1 at the very end when Max Levenger and Joe Schuppler combined on the short corner, but couldn't turn the ball goal bound.

3-1 it ended as M2 suffered their second defeat of the campaign. They will now have to go back to reflecting on their game and how they could hold their shape better ahead of 2 tough games against the top 2 teams in the league before the Christmas break. On a positive note the attitude on the pitch was much better with no cards this week, and there were some good periods of attacks when the lads did link up to move the ball on the wings.