... Is Bent!
Personally, it’s been rather a Lacrosse Christmas. The amount of protective equipment that I now own makes it a little harder to stand up on the pitch let alone chase down burly men in pursuit of a little ball. I’m not a big wuss, honest, it’s just that if you were as accident prone on and off the pitch as I am you’d be kitted to the eyeballs too. Many of the more ‘excitable’ team members have ensured that their main presents this year have been Lacrosse related and, thanks to my beloved Jen, I am now also the proud owner of a stick that is almost as tall as I am, replacing my old and slightly bent one. If you see me in the bar please don’t ask me to show my ‘long pole’ to you, especially when I’ve had a few pints, you won’t be grateful…
BUT, to this month’s news. The most memorable, or not depending on who was driving, event before the New Year was our Christmas Social. Our esteemed Social Secretaries Hass and Sam ensured that we all had an affordable Christmas meal in everyone’s favourite St. Albans pub, The Cross Keys. Roughly thirty of us congregated in our best outfits, apart from Henning who left all his decent clobber back in the Fatherland, to enjoy the company of many St. Albans Christmas revellers including Hass’ friend Clive. Who promptly sat himself at our table announcing he was ‘Clive’ and ‘Hass’ Friend’ to anyone who would listen. Clive, we salute you and hope you barged into many other festive dinners by the end of the year. After ramming turkey slices (or nut roast to you veggies) and roast potatoes into ourselves, certainly not for the last time this holiday, we all descended on the Font still in our best outfits and took to the dance floor for the remainder of the evening. No one seemed to be too distraught at the appearance of several tell tale purple stains on their best suits or frocks by the end of the evening but I think many mothers were assisting in the laundry a week later after the end of term.
The weekend before our final get together of 2004 saw our last game of the year at home to University of East Anglia’s Mixed team. Having read up on the Mixed game’s rules, Dan McCluskey decided to abandon his position in midfield and, in his own words, ‘ref this game properly unlike the monkeys that we’ve had previously’. Thanks to a ‘proper’ ref and the experience we had gleaned from previous matches… we lost the game. BUT, we only lost it by 13 goals to 9, making it our best match so far with goals from both of our Mixed Captains Julia Innes and Sarah Claridge, Dan Vickers and Hass amongst others. The second half of the match saw a greater bond between the defensive players and this, with the admirable first time performance in goal by Matt Smith, led to us actually winning the last two quarters. Now I know what you’re all thinking – when the hell are they actually going to start winning anything? The answer I would give you all is SOON, especially the way we’ve been playing. Our next Mixed game is at home to Cambridge and with memories of our first ever game still echoing with the sounds of defeat our aim will be to ensure they aren’t let off as gently as last time. Those of you who have been reading my articles over the past few months (anyone? hello?) who are interested in coming to watch us play our next game is on Sunday 23 rd January at 1pm on the farthest deHavilland sports pitch. COME AND WATCH, YOU KNOW YOU WANT TO.
So, following that shameless plug, onto Men's team news. We were very proud to welcome the President of the European Lacrosse Federation, Peter Mundy, to the University to discuss the progress and development of the Hertfordshire Comets. Mr Mundy is single handedly responsible for introducing Lax to at least eight European countries including Norway, Germany and Italy. With the Centurion Lacrosse Club he has also helped to create the UK teams of Bath, Gloucester and Northampton. Following a lengthy presentation of the creation and structure of the club and a tour of the sports facilities, Mr Mundy assured us that we would receive the full support of the ELF and of Centurions Lacrosse Club, the committee of which have generously donated ten new helmets and ten new pairs of gloves to the Comets.
Now that we’ve got the equipment needed to play Men's Lacrosse you’ll be seeing a lot more of the aggressive game that whetted many people’s appetites at the Fresher’s Fair. Speaking of Freshers… this will be the first year that the Students’ Union have organised a second Fresher’s Fair for Semester B, allowing us to recruit more players. So for those of you that feel too long has passed to join the Comets, you couldn’t be more wrong. From this month onwards we will be playing full contact matches against our sister club the Welwyn Warriors every fortnight in our Wednesday training sessions, not to mention various friendlies against clubs such as Oxford, UEA, Hitchin and the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst. We also need many more female players in order to entice a top Women's coach from St. Albans and to boost the numbers of our Mixed Squad, so ladies if you’re feeling the need to work off what Henning calls ‘Christmas Gold Bags’ then there’s really no other exciting way of exercising here at Herts.
I for one am quite impressed with my golden bags that I’ve amassed over the holiday period, but it looks like it’s time to shake them off or Henning’ll make me do press ups. Oh and for the record, those shirts we’re wearing are NOT our team shirts, fingers crossed they’ll be here before February. And it’s my birthday at the end of this month so you must all think of something nice to say to me. I’m off to play with my pole.
