Photo: East Grinstead's Niall Stott gives a quick glance towards Jon Copp before the start of their match against Kelburne. Copp is giving coaching support to EG during their EuroHockey campaign. (Image: www.HockeyImages.co.uk)It was a good day for the English in Terrassa today. Bloemendaal's win over Sroitel Brest guarantees Reading's progression to Round Two, although the 12-0 scoreline will no doubt be food for thought in the Reading camp. Reading meet the Dutch side tomorrow afternoon. Likewise, Atletic Terrassa's win over Montrouge puts Beeston through to the next round, although there was a heart stopping moment when Montrouge drew level at 1-1, before eventually going down 4-2.
But the big news of today is East Grinstead's quite emphatic win over Kelburne. Kelburne had pulled off something of a coup yesterday by drawing against RC Polo de Barcelona. Today it was Kelburne's turn to be humbled as ball after ball hit their backboards. Darren Cheeseman opened the scoring after only six minutes, with Mark Pearn making it 2-0 minutes later. East Grinstead' young German, Mats Grambusch added a third, with Ashley Jackson working his magic from a penalty corner two minutes later.
15 minutes into the match, and Kelburne were trailing 4-0. There was a bit of a pause from scoring until a late first half penalty corner was converted by 'Grinstead's other corner specialist, Gareth Carr.
The second half lost some of the pace of the first, but still the goals came. Jackson scored a second early in the half, followed 13 minutes later by a Jackson duo – Ashley setting up brother Wesley, for Wesley to score his first ever goal for East Grinstead.
When Kelburne eventually did score, it was an own goal in both senses of the word. Mark Pearn was sin-binned and, during the power play due to his absence, Adamson Harper had the misfortune to deflect the goal into his own net. But 'Grinstead had not finished yet. A penalty corner on the stroke of full time was put away by Carr to give a final score of 8-1 to East Grinstead.
Although all three English teams are through to Round Two, look forward to Super Sunday! tomorrow, when all are in action.
