On a sunny Saturday afternoon in Santry, Avoca Hockey Club beat Trinity 2-1 in a close encounter that finished with a winning goal in the last minute.
The opening game of the season is never easy. Teams are still brushing off the cobwebs from summer and, for college teams, possibly grappling with having a large influx of new players. Avoca were a team Trinity were expected to beat and for most of the first half it looked likely that they would. From the beginning Trinity had most of the possession, granted with Avoca looking dangerous on the counter attack. There weren’t many chances in the first 30 minutes. Both team had opportunities from short corners, but neither could capitalise.
Trinity were reduced to 10 men near the end of the half after Cillian Hynes received a yellow card for dissent while in the sin bin after receiving a green card. The second half would prove a more exciting affair. Five minutes in Trinity won another short corner but the ball was poorly controlled. A few minutes later Trinity would make up for this. After a poor pass from Avoca sent the ball over the sideline, Wilf King collected the ball quickly and charged into a packed Avoca circle, managing to flick the ball past the keeper.
Trinity couldn’t take advantage of this lead. Seven minutes later Avoca got one back from a short corner. For the rest of the game Trinity searched for the winning goal, missing a short corner and threatening the Avoca goal on numerous occasions. Trinity would rue their missed chances after Avoca managed to snatch a goal in the dying moments from a quick counter attack to make it 2-1.
Speaking to The University Times after the game, Coach Nasir Chaudhry said: “We had more circle penetration. We didn’t finish it and that was the main problem for us. Conceding in the very last minute of the match was disappointing. We had three short corners. We have a very good short corner routine and we couldn’t stop the ball, just didn’t happen.”
“It was a bit disappointing but still we were controlling the game, we were upper hand most of the time, structure was fine and the team played very well”, he added.
Trinity will be disappointed with the result particularly because of their dominance for most of the game and will hope to be more clinical moving forward. Next Saturday, the team take on YMCA followed by Clontarf the next day in what will be a gruelling weekend for the team.
