Champagne Lacrosse as Tridents Progress to BUCS Semi Finals

Southampton Tridents prove indomitable in BUCS once again, the crowd at Fort. Wide Lane treated once again to a filthy-gorgeous game of Lacrosse inevitably ending in a 14 – 3 points victory for the home team over visitors Exeter.

The first quarter started the way that only Southampton Men’s Lacrosse love to play first quarters, no one really did anything in defence and the keeper – Chris Lee – saved a lot of goals (thanks Chris, love, your defence xxx). Not content with the amount of shots, or maybe just the style in which he saved them, Keeper Chris decided in the majority of cases to return the ball to Exeter, giving his defence cause to run about and generally be grumpy. In attack after having sufficiently injured the keeper by pounding balls into his chest and knees, number 78, Jules, scored his first of three goals. Exeter elected to not score any goals, and the quarter finished 1-0.

Louche, lackadaisical, laissez-faire – there are many words that could be applied Exeter’s defence in the second quarter, my personal favourite is terrible. Exeter had some real trouble stopping literally every shot. Attacker Jack McClelland managed to score twice even with no ligaments left in his foot, deciding to play on just to keep the game interesting. Exeter’s eagle eyed defence seemed not to notice his inability to run/move until prompted by Jack himself just before the final whistle. Meanwhile Jules scored a spectacular individual goal, running past everyone before diving into the crease and scoring mid air. Jules scored another much less spectacular goal which hardly bares mentioning, then messed up a great feed by shooting behind his head (but if you don’t buy a ticket…). Andrew “Cupid” Valentine scored two of his seven goals by way of his mean trick of changing direction, an enigmatic tactic that Exeter never really got the hang of, even when he proceeded to do it every single time he had the ball. The defence woke up, and occasionally flattened people who made it past the half way line, or just watched them pass it off the field for dem territory gainz. However Exeter’s territorial tactics didn’t pay off as once again they failed to convert any shots, the second quarter ending 7 – 0.

Third quarter – skies darkened, wind blew, Exeter managed a goal; it truly was a sign of the apocalypse. Cupid scored twice with his dirty, filthy, changing direction move, with all the grace and agility of a small tanker. Jack scored an impressive #topched goal, only don’t tell him I said that. Exeter to their credit managed two goals, which were sufficiently unremarkable that I cannot remember in what way they were scored, however they must have been reasonable because Chris decided to pass to his defenders to clear in a controlled manner. This revolutionary approach to clearing relieved all the team, except Will Jones, because he can’t catch. Lloyd, Swiss and Stani all did a decent job of clearing however, and the ball remained north of the halfway for the greater part of the quarter, which closed at 11 – 2 to the Tridents.

The final quarter was to be a mixed bag, one of those mixed bags where the defenders go into attack for half of it and you still score three times as many goals as you concede. Cupid once again scoring two goals in that underhand and generally frowned upon tactic of going one way, stopping, then turning around and going the other way. Conspiring fellow goal scorer Jack acted rather uncouth and allow Will Jones – a famously poor shoot and a defender – into attack, much to the chagrin of the Exeter defence. They shouted, cursed and vowed to “flatten that long pole”, and carried on with much ungentlemanly like conduct, but were thwarted in their efforts by Will’s ability to move around with the ball. Being a defender and not really understanding the intricacies of attack, Will attempted a dodge on 4 people from a decent way out. He got the shot off, but alas the ball was no longer in his stick.

As the final whistle blew Harry Kenyon ran onto the pitch and sprayed Cava everywhere in the midst of the sporting “three cheers” which really was the only thing Exeter had been lacking from their post match celebrations on the previous encounter, so no one felt too bad about it. 14 -3 to the Tridents, yay sports.