​League leaders prove too strong for Banbury hC in 2025 opener

Tim Williams-Ellis holds off Repton forward George Morris to stop a home side attack.Tim Williams-Ellis holds off Repton forward George Morris to stop a home side attack.
Tim Williams-Ellis holds off Repton forward George Morris to stop a home side attack.
​Banbury HC got back into action in the England Hockey League with a 2-0 defeat at table-toppers Repton.

​The game saw competitive debuts for youngsters Ben Millar and Evan Armstrong who both produced strong performances.

Playing to a revised strategy to deal with the league leaders’ strengths the game was largely a midfield struggle with limited chances for either side, though it was Banbury keeper Will Powell who was busier than his counterpart Ambrose Davis in the Repton goal, Powell starting in the fourth minute with a fine save of Oscar Britt's shot right through to his brilliant lone effort to smother Johnson Hawley's fine run at the top of the area and prevent what looked like a certain goal that would have killed off the game.

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Repton opened the scoring in the first quarter when Adam Dixon slotted home a penalty corner won through a break away move.

Then 15 minutes later a dazzling move all of the way down the Banbury left to the base line was then crossed and pushed home from close range by Ben Clague past the stranded Powell to make it 2-0 at half time.

Banbury improved in the second half, further tweaking their strategy to gain more midfield control and utilise the tireless work of their forwards Armstrong and Harry Simons as they disrupted the home side long passing game and escapes from defence.

Indeed, the visitors began to get the better of the game but the difficulty from the first half of the season remained as half chances were not converted and despite clearly getting the better of the last quarter the score remained at 2-0 to keep the home side at the top of the table and see Banbury drop a place to only seventh and with a tough fixture to come this week.

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Manager Steve Brooker said: "We have a very tough start to the second half but we can take satisfaction from a good performance that may well have overwhelmed most of the other sides in the League and we can be very pleased with the parts played by our League debut players.

"We won only one penalty corner, usually our main source of goals, and must improve this tally especially until we start to convert more open play chances, but overall we are as pleased as you can be having lost our opener. There is a long way to go and top four remains our objective for the season in a tight table where a couple of wins we see us shot up the league."​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

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