Thursday night saw the last game in this year’s Summer League held at Reading Hockey Club. The final, as of last year was between Reading and South Berkshire.
With Reading fielding a much stronger team than the match between the two sides last week, they went into the game as very firm favourites.
South Berkshire should have opened the scoring in the second minute, but Rob Badley missed a golden opportunity in front of goal.
From then on it was all Reading, with goalkeeper David Baines pulling off numerous saves to keep the score to 0-0 at the first quarter break.
The second quarter began as the last ended, with Reading laying siege to the Berks goal, so it was much against the run of play when Berkshire won a short corner and after some ping pong ball inside the Reading D, Tom King hit the back of the net with a low powerful shot.
South Berkshire then held firm until halftime to lead 1-0.
The restart was barely a minute old when Reading scored themselves with an equally scrappy goal to level up the game.
Once again it was all Reading throughout the third quarter, and with one minute left before the final break yet another messy goal saw Reading take the lead.
The final quarter eventually saw Reading overwhelming Berkshire’s defence with faster passing and movement, and with two goals inside a minute Berkshire’s resistance was broken.
There was still some fight left in Berkshire and with two of the up-and-coming stars of the team, Peter Swan and Keegan Nienaber combining to score a late goal, Swan ran half of the pitch with the ball to allow Nienaber to finish the move off close in for a final score of 4-2.
The team now takes a break until September before three friendly matches against Slough (2nd Sept), Marlow (9th Sept) and Henley (16th Sept) with the league campaign restarting on 23rd September.
Words and pictures by Chris Cook