Men's 1st XI back with a good win after Christmas break

Sils took the opportunity to play a friendly match to ensure they had at least some match practice in after the long Christmas break before they re-commence their league campaign on Saturday.

With neither side totally at full-strength, the game was still highly competitive, with some excellent fast flowing hockey being played.

The Sils probably just deserved to win the match based on number of chances created, but will look to improve their finishing when the league campaign re-starts for them on Saturday.

At half-time the score was 0-0, with neither side able to force any corners, but with Sils having the best two chances of the game, if Alex Dooley and James Sloane had shown a little more composure in the D, the goal that they both would have deserved for their excellent running and positioning would have resulted.

In fact, the running from these two was probably the biggest plus for the Sils from this match, with Alex Dooley in particular showing that, whilst not a natural finisher, the movement and options he created playing up-front led to him being the man-of-the-match.

The second half continued in the same vein as the first, with Sils shading it in terms of goal-scoring chances, if perhaps not in possession. Phil Midgley and Chris Ready were being marshalled excellently by Chris Wallis in goal, and it looked very unlikely that Stourport would score, whilst at the other end, Captain James Clapham had two shots within the space of two minutes which, with the keeper beaten, both whistled inches wide of the left post.

With 15 minutes to go, Stourport managed to turn the ball over in midfield and scored the first goal with Wallis having no chance in goal as the ball deflected away from his first save straight to an opposition striker, but this simply served to galvanise the home side into knowing they needed to be more effective in front of goal.

The equaliser came when Dan Sulway found a foot just outside the 23m area, and from the resulting pass fired into the D, a home defender, under pressure from Matt Fell, deflected the ball into his own net.

Stourport then countered, and won several penalty corners, but failed to score, with Wallis making a number of good saves, and with minutes remaining, a swift counter-attack by Sils led to Dooley and Jon Hollway combining to get a half-shot in, which ended up creeping to the far post, where Max Levenger was in the right place at the right time to tap home the winner.

A very solid and encouraging display from the Sils to hopefully set them up for their promotion charge in the second half of the season.