Slough began their league season away at Wokingham and apart from some disgraceful "punctuality issues" got off to a great start.

With a team made up primarily of last years 3rd XI, Slough approached this fixture with a certain amount of trepidation being as, on paper, it looked like a mismatch with most of the players more familiar with things 3 leagues lower! However Slough stepped up as a team and put together a competitive performance with everyone working hard with the usual combination of skill and enthusiasm expected of a Slough XI. Everyone put in a great stint in their positions with especial praise going to the midfield engine of Avjeet Dhandwar and Bini Shergill who did not stop hounding the opposition all game. Upfront, Monserrate's lateral movement enabled him to create space for himself at every opportunity while Clough's running and positioning on the wing gave space for the rest of the Slough side to build on. In the first half Slough's defence was rock-like, restricting Wokingham to a couple of speculative snap efforts with Taranjit Singh and Mo Daggar putting in some great tackles on the flanks and Steve Dixon and Surjit Sandhu marshalling the middle.

Slough went in at half time at 0-0 which was a great effort but then conceded almost immediately from the pushback when a loss of concentration allowed Wokingham to score. However Slough replied almost immediately wehn Man of the Match Monserrate robbed a wokingham defender of the ball on his 25 and proceeded to calmly slot the ball past the oncoming keeper to make it 1-1. Slough then had a chance to make it 2-1 when Monserrate crafted a short corner shortly after but the slow pushout on a sticky pitch caused Dixon to rush his shot which went high and wide. Slough then allowed Wokingham to score again when a mixup in defence and an erroneous 'leave it' call resulted in the ball trickling slowly over the line, much to the amusement of the Wokingham attack.

Rather than becoming demoralised however, Slough rallied and equalised again when Clough picked up yet another long pass from Dixon and scored with aplomb. In the dying moments however Slough conceded another goal, this time from a good passing move by Wokingham to give a winning 3-2 scoreline.By then some tired legs, that may have prevented the goal earlier, were not able to get back.

Generally Slough's tactics worked well with Wokingham unable to deal with the distribution from the back and Slough's movement picking up the ball almost all the time from their defensive clearences. So although the evolution of 'route one' hockey was a bit one dimensional, it seemed to demoralise Wokingham that after each attack they were immediately sent right back into their own half in an end to end battle.
All in all a good start and promising for the future when many of the players unavailable today are available. The players on the pitch today should be very proud of their play and achievements so far.