Oranges and Lemons

Another Thursday double-header (or so we thought) with first up the Adel Mens Oranges game at home against Leeds. An interesting start to the evening with 5 teams present and all of them adamant they were due to play at 7. In the end it turned out that Harrogate had arrived early, perhaps to avoid the congestion and traffic disruptions caused by the Tour de France.

An interesting team selection saw Presty retain her place in goal for the men after her strong performance the previous week which meant young Tom Taylor played out of goal. Adel started poorly and soon went a goal down. Despite quickly pulling a goal back after a good interception from Will Powley who teed up Phil Bayford for an easy finish, Team Orange continued to play more like Team Lemons, with an obsession with trying to play th ekiller 50 yard pass and an annoying habit of running into contact, losing possession and then standing hands on hips as the opposition ran away to the other end.

This led to Leeds scoring 2 more goals before the interval and at half time, veteran Simon Taylor delivered the required message that was needed based on the obvious errors that were apparent from the sidelines. In the second half Team Orange initially struggled to show any improvement, but eventually some passing, movement off the ball and clever interchanges saw Bayford’s run on goal impeded by a hefty shove in the back which umpire Cockburn correctly awarded as a stroke.

The usual fight for who was going to take it saw Sam Ransley dropped from stroke duties after missing his last one and Powley cooly slotted the stroke away to pull one back. Oranges then began to dominate the game and further incisive attacks into the D saw the ball pulled back to the top of the circle where the waiting Gwyn Evans picked his spot to equalise. Presty made some fine saves at the other end to keep the Oranges in the game and a couple of goal line clearances were also scrambled away. With the umpires signalling the last two minutes of the game, Cooky, Bayford and Evans combined to get the ball across to the goal-hanging Portnell a few yards out and he took the chance with aplomb to give the Oranges a win that looked most unlikely at half time. Its a sign of a good team who can win when playing badly but the victory meant that half of the team heading off to Wakefield to play Bradford at 9pm were in high spirits.

Sadly this was short lived as the journey to Wakefield was interupted by Bally communicating via some trendy social media app that the game was off. Apparently Bradford having already been thrashed by Wakefield, had headed for home rather than staying for the later fixture v Adel Oranges so most of the players got the message just in time to avoid the trip to Wakefield (especially annoying having cleverly avoided all the road closures in Leeds city centre for the event at the Arena for the Tour de France).

An eventful evening and perhaps the mantle of Team Lemons should pass to either Bradford for dropping out at the last minute or Wakefield for thrashing them and making them leave early?!