North Down entertained Bangor at Comber Leisure Centre last Saturday.\u00a0 Although Bangor have played more games than other teams they were the league pacesetters and North Down knew the significance of the game with the possibility of league restructuring next season in the wake of the new Irish Hockey League.<\/p>\n
North down opened at a fast pace and won a number of corners but Rowan Poots\u2019 efforts were well saved by Andy Seay in the Bangor goal.\u00a0 It was Bangor who struck first when Cunningham was allowed time in mid circle to get the ball under control and slot past Gareth McBride.\u00a0 North Down thought they had equalised when Gareth Bailie deflected a loose ball into the net but the umpire disallowed for an infringement.\u00a0 From a corner, Seay again saved but Tom Donnan was on hand to slam home the equaliser.\u00a0 Just on the stroke of half time North Down went in front when Phil Wilson cleverly controlled the ball and beat Seay from five yards.<\/p>\n
The second half was only minutes old when Shepherd increased the home team\u2019s lead with a strong strike from a corner and only minutes later Poots got on the scoresheet when he scored with a strong shot from the top of the circle to make it 4-1.\u00a0 With a three goal lead it looked as if North Down would cruise to a comfortable victory but this was not the case.\u00a0 With 20 minutes remaining Bangor scored from a penalty corner when McBride was beaten at the left post to make it 4-2.\u00a0 North Down had another goal disallowed when Andy McGimpsey reacted quickest after a corner but the umpire blew too soon for another corner.\u00a0 With this setback North Down lost their cool and their discipline with a number of players receiving green and yellow cards at one stage being reduced to nine men.\u00a0 Bangor upped their game and it took some good defensive work to keep them out.\u00a0 Mark Linter and Keith Conway both made goal line clearances and McBride saved well from corners however with 8 minutes remaining Bangor pulled another goal back from a corner.\u00a0 With the home team restored to full strength and 5 minutes remaining Rowan Poots scored the all important decisive goal with a strong reverse shot from the right of the circle and North Down were able to play out time and secure three valuable points.<\/p>\n
Report by Robin Mitchell.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
North Down entertained Bangor at Comber Leisure Centre last Saturday.\u00a0 Although Bangor have played more games than other teams they were the league pacesetters and North Down knew the significance of the game with the possibility of league restructuring next season in the wake of the new Irish Hockey League. North down opened at a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_themeisle_gutenberg_block_has_review":false,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3623","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-match-reports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/northdownhc.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3623","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/northdownhc.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/northdownhc.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/northdownhc.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/northdownhc.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3623"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/northdownhc.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3623\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/northdownhc.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3623"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/northdownhc.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3623"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/northdownhc.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3623"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}