Romsey battled to inflict a similar scoreline to the away fixture in a great advert for lower league hockey between two sides who balanced youth and experience.
It was Poole who started the brighter, putting their better prepared warm up routine to the test they played the ball down their right, taking out Pete O’Hara and Andy Moger, then played the ball past Duncan Sanders and Dave Loescher beautifully to leave their young forward to reverse strike the ball just inside the post past Ollie O’Hara in goal.
Simeon Field roused Romsey, by challenging the centre midfielders to get a grip on the game, and Morgan Robertson rose to the task, taking a lead role in winning the ball and distributing it left and right. Romsey made some half chances for Dan Blackman and Phil Orak up front, but when they got the ball to Stan Cazaly on the right, Romsey started to open up the Poole defence.
Romsey equalised when Cazaly played the ball across to Steve White, who appeared to have under hit his reverse stick shot but it squeezed in under the keeper.
Then Dave Loescher brought the ball out of defence, over the half way line and then up to the Poole circle. He won a penalty corner and stayed up to support the move. Colin Harwood’s push out to Morgan Robertson resulted in the ball not being cleared, and Dan Blackman stretched to play the ball to Man of the Match Cazaly to fire in from a tight angle to give Romsey a 2-1 HT lead.
In the second half Romsey pushed forward, and another penalty corner shot from Robertson was not cleared, Romsey had several chances to get the ball over the line, eventually Harwood making it 3-1.
Harwood then played a perfectly weighted ball to Cazaly on the half way line, and the right sided player ran with the ball to the top of the circle before shooting and seeing the keeper only able to deflect it inside the post for 4-1.
With Duncan Sanders going off injured, Robertson dropped to centre back, and Blackman stepped up to cap a fine game on his return by playing centre midfield. This allowed Harwood to play higher up the pitch, and a good move saw Steve White make it 5-1 with a shot on the turn.
Poole scored a consolation second late on to mirror the scoreline from the away fixture, but Romsey were worthy winners, and the game allowed some of the players returning from injury and those playing only their first ever games to gain some confidence and pitch time.
