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First round of the cup - the 7s have a pretty poor history in SAL Cup competitions.  Sorry, no, that's wrong.  Teams that have Raaz as their skipper have a pretty poor history in cup competitions.  Either way the winners would play the 8s - surely not fixed considering we played them last year in the same cup competition?!

As normal with trips to HSBC, the heavens opened ten minutes before kick off and then proceeded unrelentingly until we were back in the safety of the clubhouse.  HSBC were typical of the oppo that we have come up against this season - a couple of useful players but questionable at the back.  The first half was even although Cars should have made more of the chances that fell to them.  Both Alan Van de Thake and Matt Horan had gilt edged opportunities to establish a lead but they had obviously been taking shooting lessons from Matt Parker during the warm up, as the HSBC goalkeeper had to retrieve the ball from the tennis courts on more than one occasion.  Cars did have the ball in the net but Danny Gazzelloni was called, rather unfairly, offside.

HSBC's first real attack ended with a penalty being given against Mark Brown for bringing down the HSBC striker.  Mark used all his experience, and even cleaned his boots a la Barthez to put the HSBC penalty taker off.  It worked wonders as Mark dived to his left to pull off a fine save.

Cars tightened the screw in the second half and went in front through a fine individual goal from Matt Horan who picked up the ball near halfway, muscling his way passed HSBC defenders to finish well from 8 yeards.  HSBC's equaliser was a superb long range effort that caught Cars off guard and taught the merits of closing players down quickly.

Cars were ahead again within minutes.  Alan Thake netted from Matt Horan's cross.  The provider, Matt Horan, turned into scorer for the third - capping a fine all round display.  Cars held on until the end despite HSBC scoring a second after a ball over the top had released their pacey striker.

A good solid performance away from home in unfavourable conditions.  The 7s dug in well and fully deserved the excellent food in the bar afterwards.  Roll on the 8s - this is our year.

PS Dylan May originally wrote this report but there was not enough space on the site for all the pictures he drew to go with the three lines of text.

Matt Parker