Dumfries 2’s welcomed Hillhead 8’s to the King George V on Saturday hoping to atone for the narrow home defeat from the previous week. Due to several late call offs, the home team was a mix of both seconds and thirds player with a varied age demographic for sure, the youngest being only nine, the eldest, seventy plus.

The match started very evenly with both teams working hard in the midfield areas to gain possession and direct play towards their opponents goal. The Dumfries defence managed to deal with any of the Hillhead attacks throughout the first half reasonably well, despite conceding numerous penalty corner awards and it was to be through one of these at the Hillhead that Dumfries opened the scoring in the 14th minute with the only goal of the half. A hit in from Tupper was stopped and passed by Renie to Freddie Smith whose well struck shot was initially saved but Tupper reacted fastest to slot the ball home before the Hillhead defence at time to react.

The second half was very similar to the first with Dumfries carving out several good opportunities to increase their lead but the Hillhead defence remained resolute to the challenge and in return they also began to press Dumfries looking for an equaliser. With four minutes remaining on the clock, Hillhead scored their equaliser from a penalty corner of their own. Changing their corner set up, the resultant strike at goal was deflected into the home side’s goal off of a defenders stick.

Thankfully for Dumfries, Hillhead failed to capitalise on a further short corner award in the dying seconds of the match to finish the game with honours even but it was a disappointment that they had failed to hold out for a much needed win in the end.

Grateful thanks from all of the Dumfries players to Iain and Ross for umpiring the match.

Player of the Match – Adam Kerr