Guildford Veterans 4 Petersfield Veterans 5: FOR THE second game in a row, Petersfield Veterans managed a win with a less than convincing performance.

Petersfield started brightly, with precise passing from the Petersfield quartet of Hulme, Budden, Cornett and Wilson regularly finding Pruden in plenty of space in the Guildford D. After a couple of sighters, Pruden found his range and dispatched two reverse stick strikes to give Petersfield an early 2-0 lead. He extended this to 3-0, when he converted a penalty stroke to bring up his hat-trick.

Guildford then started to dominate in midfield, with their forwards running through and finding space in the Petersfield defence. Last ditch tackles from Thompson, MacIntyre and Phillips kept Guildford at bay, but the pressure told and a rasping shot just evaded Broadmeadow’s dive. Just before the break, Guildford closed the gap further through a neatly worked penalty corner.

Petersfield found some composure at the beginning of the second half and won a series of penalty corners, but poor finishing and good defending prevented Petersfield from extending their lead. Finally, after Budden failed to stop another penalty corner, Dryden-Brownlee found Thompson at the top of the D, who smashed it past the Guildford keeper.

Petersfield then began to suffer from the lack of substitutes on a hot day, with uncharacteristic errors in basic hockey from Thompson, Budden, Hulme and Cornett. The continual loss of possession told when Guildford converted a penalty corner that just evaded MacIntyre on the post.

Although defending for much of the later stages of the game, Petersfield did make forays forward and Pruden had a number of half-chances that he blazed wide. However, on one of these forays, Dryden-Brownlee’s neat pass found Hulme who sweetly slapped it home from the top of the D. With five minutes to go, Guildford took the score to 5-4.

The final phase of the game was tense, but Petersfield survived through some fine tackling from Phillips and Thompson and a couple of timely interventions from Broadmeadow in the Petersfield goal.