Just as they were last weekend, the roles were reversed for the final Holcombe games of the Premier League outdoor season before the Christmas break.

Last weekend, our women faced a tough task at home in a game they were expected to win. This week, they headed to the home of double league Champions Surbiton as the hosts bid to reach 50 regular season domestic games unbeaten.

Last weekend, we had a tough trip north to third placed Beeston and this week, faced a Reading side who have claimed 3 wins from their opening 9 fixtures. Even without GB captain Barry Middleton, it was our turn to deal with the expectation of winning.

The girls broke up their week of training; instead of opting for their usual Tuesday and Wednesday evenings, they trained outdoor on Wednesday before heading indoor on Thursday. The decision was made with half an eye on the first round of Premier League Indoor fixtures that come around the weekend before Christmas.

Regardless of what was to come in just under a months’ time, there was the very serious task of closing the gap on Surbiton at Sugden Road on Saturday afternoon to deal with first.

If I sever the ties that I have with the group on a personal level, Saturday just wasn’t good enough.

In no way did that game look as though it was 1^st v 2^nd in the league and that’s the most frustrating thing about the day. As a group, we are far better than the performance and score line showed on Saturday and as a result we’ve lost a further 3 points to them in the race.

Games and opportunities like Saturday are at a premium in this league and if you’re not careful, they can pass you by. Unfortunately for us, that’s exactly what happened.

There’s not long to rectify the problem and that’s most definitely a good thing. It’s not a problem in terms of ability, it is purely a problem of turning up on the day.

3 weeks of indoor preparation and an elite tournament at Tonbridge Hockey Academy on the 11^th December will prepare the girls for the first round of Premier League Indoor matches and with Saturday in the books, that is the sole focus now.

For us, we ran hard on Tuesday.

We were very transparent in recognising that our preparation for the Beeston game wasn’t quite right. For some reason we were missing something in that opening half; something that we simply cannot allow to happen.

We lost Barry this week to an operation on his hand which took place on Friday. Thankfully, with the injury occurring when it did, he only misses the one league game before Christmas rather than if it were to have happened a month ago.

I’m not going to sit here and say to you that we were absolutely fine without him and could cover him easily because he’s Barry Middleton. You can’t replace Barry with anyone in the world that can do a better job so I’d be lying if I said otherwise.

Unfortunately for us, we suffered from the same problem as the girls 24 hours earlier. We just didn’t show up.

Credit to Reading in how they played. Tommy was fantastic in goal, Jonny Gooch played the role of ‘main distributor’ exceedingly well and Carson number 1 and Watts have bucket loads of experience.

For us, it’s just gutting to lose some of the cushion we’d worked so hard to build at the top and leave ourselves with a two months until we go again of that game being fresh in our minds.

21 games in just over three months is a lot to get through and if the last two weeks’ performances have shown us anything, it’s that we need this Christmas break.

We have big players and have shown our quality throughout this first half but we just didn’t show it yesterday.

Big time players make big time plays.

If you don’t understand what I mean, watch the final two minutes of Game 7 of the 2016 NBA Finals and you’ll see the two biggest plays of the series by the two biggest players in the series to win a Championship.

Let’s look at the positives though;

Personally, I think it’s a good thing for both squads.

I’d much rather go into a two-month break having been kicked in the teeth than having felt pretty good about myself last night when the other results came in.

Across both squads we now have to work even harder to right what happened this weekend and set ourselves up for a big push in the New Year.

Ultimately though, we turn to indoor. The girls have their first season in the Premier League to get to grips with and we have a promotion to win.

There are some big games at the start of February and the margins are small enough that whoever works harder for these next 8 weeks will take those points.

Winter is coming…

 

@BandurakWriting on Twitter or via www.nickbandurakblog.wordpress.com

Picture supplied by www.groutphotography.co.uk