Shepton Mallett II 3 Bridgwater III 4

BRIDGWATER III emerged as 4-3 winners from a scintillating seven-goal thriller on Saturday.

Bridgwater started brightly and looked strong on the counter-attack with a new look strike team of Will Pope and Paul Bond linking well.

However Shepton exposed the channels well and were unlucky not to open the scoring.

A heroic goal line save from Mike Morrish prevented this, with a feat that left him entangled with the goal.

Good counter-attacking play and some inspired substitutions by the captain resulted in three quick goals from Bridgwater - an off the cuff short corner routine was well finished by Marcus Blyth, along with goals from Paul Tilley and Will Pope.

At half-time Bridgwater led 3-2.

In the second-half, Bridgwater lost three players to green cards and had to re-organise to prevent Shepton from scoring.

A breakaway goal from Will Pope was against the run of play, but was everything Bridgwater required.

Another goal line save in the second half, this time from an out of position Dan Batten denied Shepton from a late comeback.

Brilliant work from the defence of Mike Morrish, Marcus Blyth and Ian Stradling resulted in a 4-3 win for Bridgwater, cementing the second place spot in the division.

Man of the Match was Will Pope with some excellent work on the break and some well taken goals.

Tiverton 7 Bridgwater V 0

THIS week the GoCrea8 Hockey League South East 3 division had Bridgwater travelling to face a new side Tiverton.

Tiverton had steamrollered all that came before them in the previous weeks so yet another challenge awaited the Bridgwater V.

On a par with recent weeks, Bridgwater opened with the opposition all over them.

The bus that was Steve Morrish, James Kettlewell and Kev Hicks was well and truly parked, with Rob Wood in goal making some crucial saves. For a while it looked like Tiverton had scored all their goals last week and were taking pity on Bridgwater.

Tiverton were far too strong for a slightly depleted Bridgwater and did finally break the deadlock.

Tiverton were proving to be too strong and with a couple of decisions going against Bridgwater, they were made to fight hard.

The defence which was now tiring - and the silky movement from Tiverton tore Bridgwater apart, scoring three in quick succession just before half-time which took the wind out of Bridgwater’s sails – and more followed in the second-half.