Hamble 3 were magnificent

A film could be made about yesterday’s game. It would tell the story of how a band of nine brothers and one girl, faced up to a superior merciless force dressed in white. You might be conjuring images of a small band of Hamble rebels fighting innumerable storm troopers of the Chichester Empire which would be apt as Mick can wield his stick like a light sabre to take balls out of the air, but I’m imagining a rag bag of Wild West gunfighters taking on cut throat Mexicans. To the great theme tune by Elmer Bernstein the movie would resurrect Yul Brynner, Steve McQueen et al to play Captain Pip and his gallant team. Their mission? To use all their wit and skills to stop the opposition from scoring double figures. Spoiler alert - they succeeded, but, boy, it was a close run thing. One, two, three, four (whoops, own goal), five, six, seven (drat, another ushered in), eight, nine, NO MORE. They dug deep, ran and ran (Suuj never stopped), nipped and hustled (Oscar, what a lad), dribbled past opponents from one end to the other (Celia, are you sure you’re not a boy?), held off multiple opponents (Jarvis), took their body to the limit (Cheyne, not a pretty site when retching), deflected shot after shot from the line (Mick), defended every inch of the D (Bruce), and contributed in some way (Roper, what did you do?). Who could play Sootie? Even Dwayne Johnson would have a tough time recreating his heroics. If it weren’t for Sootie, they could have scored two dozen. Offered the reward of a drop of beer for every save, Sootie collected an overflowing pint at the end of the game.

As the credits roll, images of the actual players would be shown to reveal how their lives turned out. Oscar would go on to sail the seas at the helm of a super yacht and Celia would rise up the ranks of success to own such a vessel. The rest of the gang would be shown smiling and joking but in states of severe disrepair, living out their days in the home for crippled hockey players.