Imperial lacrosse go top of the league!
Lacrosse
Imperial College 12
Royal Holloway 8
With Royal Holloway 1s having won the league last year, and staying (until now, anyway) unbeaten this season, this match was always going to be tough. However, true to the general outlook of the lacrosse club, we maintained a relaxed attitude building up to the match, with Charlotte doing an er...interesting job of selecting the music and leading the karaoke in the minibus on the ride there and back, and our warm-up consisting mostly of Tim treating us to a line-dance, as well as a few slightly more serious drills and stretches.
The draw was at noon, and fortunately we were able to start with our backs to the sun, which was a real problem when throwing around beforehand, and presumably the reason why Mike had managed to hit himself on the head with the ball! Normally, it has to be said, we get of to rather slow starts, but this time, we managed to get two goals in the opening minutes, thanks to our resident Norwegian Petter, leaving Holloway clearly rattled. However, with a chorus of "sticks up, look sharp", Holloway pulled themselves together and came back to get two of their own. Some well-fought centres by Lizzie meant we were able to pull back ahead, ending the first quarter at four goals to two.
The second quarter had Holloway come out and give us all they had, though some excellent defending by Charlotte and Taddy (with his own unique, yet effective, mix of lacrosse and hockey) managed to frustrate Holloway sufficiently that the majority of their efforts were repelled, while Hamish scored his first goal for the club in spectacular fashion, running the length of the pitch before slotting it neatly into the back of Holloway's net. Taddy also found time during defending for a few trips up into attack, contributing to the goal tally. It was during this quarter that Mike had a good stick-full of dirt flicked into his eyes while defending in front of goal, resulting in him having to go off to rinse his eyes out. Fortunately Holloway didn't capitalise on being one man up, and the score at half time was 5-3 to us.
We knew we were playing well, and we also knew that the next quarter was our chance to really pull ahead. Holloway made a few changes to their team, with fresh legs injecting some added pace into their attack. We had no such luxury, having only 10 players, but that didn't stop us playing the best quarter of the match, with some great play by Tim, defending like a madman one minute, and then running up the pitch to score the next. Emily kept up some serious pressure on the Holloway defence, in particular their keeper, leaving him clearly nervous during every one of his attempted clearances, resulting in a few mistakes on his part, letting Petter and Lizzie take full advantage and increase our lead. The quarter ended ten-five, and things were looking good for us, though by now everyone was feeling tired, and the injuries were adding up. Still, there were only fifteen minutes left, so only one last effort was needed to get the win.
The final quarter started poorly for us, with the Holloway attacks starting to build up. Charlotte, J-T, Hamish and Tim continued doing a great job in defence, but Holloway managed to get three goals. This might have something to do with our goalkeeper, Gautham, the selfproclaimed "great wall of India", becoming somewhat distracted by one of the more attractive members of the Holloway team, giving her the chance to score against him, and not with him, much to his disappointment. This gave Holloway a confidence boost, and they started believing in a comeback. We had been on the receiving end of such a comeback from them last season, and were not about to let it happen again, so we picked up the pace, and secured two more goals, effectively sealing our win, leaving Holloway with no time to get back into contention. The match ended twelve-eight to us, a thoroughly deserved win. Everyone played superbly, and it was one of the best games of lacrosse we've played yet. The quality and determination of every player really shone through, and we came away with an awesome result, putting us firmly at the top of the league.
