Bristol Pitbulls played in their final Div 2 South West regional last night in Cheltenham. This was probably the toughest tournament I’ve every played in. We had two tough games against Swansea and Rhondda, both of which have strong players – we lost 6-1 and 7-0 I think! Then we played Wellington who were promoted out of Div 3 from their last tournament. This was a close game where we got to 2-1 up, but conceded an equaliser. We powered down for the winner, but with 7 seconds from the end, Wellington got the ball and fired it down the pool before being deflected off one of our player’s paddles to the side line. One of their sprinters powered down the pool, picked the ball up and scored. Fortunately, the Rhondda ref saw the sprinter hadn’t even tried to stop or present the ball for the side line throw and cancelled the goal out. So we drew the game – phew. Our final game was against Bere Forest. These guys had been demoted from Div 1 and drew against Rhondda, so they had to gain maximum goal difference to ensure they were promoted straight back up. Needless to say they took us to the cleaners and we lost 14-1. I can’t remember ever being that busy in goal and I did save quite a few as the score would have been a lot worse. Still great experience to play against top players and it shows the level we need to aspire to. See you all at training on Wednesday.
PS. Notable highlights: Ezra was sent off, Curry afterwards was excellent, Harvey and Rollo had a spat, Harvey broke his paddles, Mike Sims came to support us and Lewis has a very scrotum!
Mark Gillett 18 Feb 2024
