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Mike’s Musings
We start this week with the fantasy hockey league and our thanks go to Simon Hipwell for the hard work put in to getting this up and running. There are currently 49 ‘teams’ registered, with Gill Hipwell’s Hippos currently in 1st place with 113 points. Two players who seem to be the hot picks at the moment are Krystal Bishop and Gavin Cole who will have bagged you 34 and 29 points respectively if you have them in your team. 

If you haven’t registered to manage your own fantasy team you should get involved it’s not too late to take part. In addition, I know that Simon put out a request to all teams for assistance with updating the stats and results for the fantasy league each week, at this point in time not every team has nominated a representative to update the site. 

It would be great if we could help Simon out with this as it is quite time consuming if you have a number of teams to update. Please contact Simon if you are willing to help out. If you want to get involved with the fantasy league follow the link on the home page of the website.

Now to the weekend’s action and our teams were involved in 18 matches this week in which we took the full 3 points in 12 of them. The U16 girls started their national cup campaign very strongly with convincing wins over Sudbury (5-0) and Norwich City (4-0).  I witnessed the Ladies 1sts take a well deserved win over Old Loughtonians, Anouska Hipperson providing the goal that separated the teams. 

The Men’s 2nds hosted Long Sutton and looked very threatening from the start nearly scoring within the first ten seconds and went on to win 4-1 with goals from David Francis, Lawrence Baynes, Martin Fields and Robbie Kinsella.  

The Ladies 2nds took another 3 points this week against Old Buckenham further concreting their position at the top of Division 2NE with 5 wins out of 5.

The Ladies 3rds beat Thetford 4-0 with player of the match going to Rosie Chubbock. There were also wins for the Ladies 5ths against North Walsham and the Girl’s Development squad against Pelicans, both teams winning by two goals to one. The Men’s 5ths took a well deserved win against Pelicans 2’s and the Men’s 7ths lost 1-0 to the 6ths in the home derby game.  

On Sunday the Men’s 1sts took a point away from their game against Bromley and Beckenham with a much more composed second half performance. This result keeps Magpies above Bromley in the table and will give them some confidence in the coming weeks.

Looking forward to next weekend and the Men’s 1sts have an away trip to Old Loughtonian’s who currently sit mid table having beaten Wimbledon 2-1 so they will be entering the encounter with confidence. 

The Ladies 1sts are at home again this weekend hosting newly promoted Oxford Hawks who beat Maidstone away 5-1 to put them in fourth position two points ahead of Magpies. Oxford Hawks are currently leading league goal scorers with 13 on their tally so it could be an interesting match. 

The Ladies 2nds will look to go six for six when they travel to Broadland on Saturday who currently sit mid table. 

The Men’s 3rds host Norwich Dragons in what could be a close fought contest with only 1 point separating the teams in the table after the 3rds beat Cambridge 5-1 away and the Dragons took 3 points against Dereham this past weekend. 

For all the details on teams playing home and away this weekend please take a look at the website. As always, good luck to all our teams in action this weekend.

Just a couple of things to finish up with:
·         Keep an eye out on the website for Pies TV, some interesting posts featuring Bard Larkin and some post match interviews from around the club.
·         Thank you to those teams who post game reviews on the website. It would be nice to see a few more match reports being posted. You don’t have to be a literary genius to submit a report. Have a go!
·         I also understand that we still need volunteers to help out at the Fireworks so please come forward and offer your services. You can sign up for roles in the clubhouse or contact James Smith directly.
Best regards,
Will Main


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