Bath v London Raptors – Senior Flags Rd1 – League placement.

Bath v London Raptors

Date: 22nd September 2018

Venue: Odd Down, Bath

Competition: Senior Flags Rd1 – League “Play In”

Final Score Bath 1:19

Photos on Facebook

Bath outgunned by new London Club

The squads

The London Raptors are a newly formed club, based on the East side of the Capital. League Rules allow a new club to put forward the argument on the league level they should be able to enter in their first season, rather than start at the very bottom. As this coincided with the new league structure, the league secretary, with the agreement of Bath, scheduled this fixture to determine the level of the new club. The winners would enter SEMLA Division 1 and the losers Division 2.

It also turned out that the two clubs were to meet the next day in the first round of the senior Flags. Both clubs agreed to double header the game given the travel and likelihood of player and field availability.

Shaun Peacock gets his man

The weather was grim, constant rain, but at least not too cold.

Bath put out a good squad, with very few “first team” players unable to play, Captain Luke Wilmot had a decent pool to choose from, opting to limit the squad size and play the best players available for this important opener to the season.

At face Alex Hustler dominated throughout the game, combining particularly well with Josh Yeoman at LSM. However, the home side were unable to convert the possession into goals, often giving the ball away through unconvincing passes or poor final pass choices. That said, the first three attempts on goal, and the lions share of the game for the first 10 minutes went to Bath. This failure to convert was highlighted when the Raptors opened their account through a good outside shot, this settled the visitor’s nerves and from that point on Bath were chasing the game, which in turn lead to a few more unforced errors.

It took a three-dodge solo run by Simon Griffiths to get Bath on the score sheet towards the end of the first quarter, but by that time Raptors were in control.

Ben Whitfield defends

The result of this game wasn’t a surprise, Bath have been in a division that has given very little regular quality opposition, the best games often when the club played amongst themselves. The lack of “game speed”; the general speed of thought under pressure was the obvious difference between the sides. As a unit Bath are much closer than this score-line suggests and, providing the first team players are available, and the club gets the games, the gap with the other clubs in the SEMLA leagues will get smaller, the quality is there.

Some performances deserve mention, Will Tilson in goal made some outstanding saves, and brought the ball out of defence with confidence. Alex Hustler showed that he is a force to be reckoned with at Face. Luke Wilmot ran the defence and captained excellently, Josh Yeoman came up with a lot of important ground balls and Alex George seemed to put in more miles than both teams put together.

Bath can now look forward to some good quality competition in the upcoming season

Quarter Scores

1st quarter Bath 1:5 Raptors

Griffiths

2nd quarter Bath 0:4 Raptors

3rd quarter Bath 0:4 Raptors

4th quarter Bath 0:6 Raptors

Final Score Bath 1:19 Raptors

Scorers

  • Simon Griffiths 1

Referees

  • Emily Storey (Panel)
  • Nik Roberts (Bath)

CBO

  • Alex Foster-Powell (Bath)