Tuesday, March 19Royal Holloway's offical student publication, est. 1986

#BearsDay Update: Curse of the final minute for Men’s Football 2s

On this year’s 5th of November #BearsDay the fireworks started early as the Men’s Football 2nd team faced University of Surrey 3rd on Nobles. A goal fest ended in another massive blow to morale in the dying seconds of the game: 4-4.

After four weeks of football, it is safe to say that this season is characterised by goals, goals, and more goals, with 7 goals scored per game on average. We went into the game on a high after a great performance against Medway 2 (4-1). Surrey had won all of its previous games, but within 15 minutes we were 2-0 up. Antoine scored his 3rd and 4th goal of the season after quick breaks and inch perfect assists. Surrey then got a goal back before half time, due to poor defending on a free kick. A header cam off the post and left our goalie Harrison Elliott powerless to the rebound. Half time score: 2-1.

Surrey was the stronger side for much of the second half, and they scored about 10 minutes in. A corner was not cleared well and the ball ended up in our goal after a scramble: 2-2. We then started playing our game again, and scored from a free kick to take the lead again. The free kick was curled into the box by Isaac Miller and converted into a goal by Antoine to complete his hat trick. Our fourth goal was a shot from 30 yards out, of which I wish I could say it was a worldy. In all honesty, however, I slipped as I took the shot and the goalkeeper fumbled as the ball bounced past him: 4-2. With 20 minutes left on the clock, Surrey pushed us back into our own half, and got rewarded with a penalty: 4-3. Having run out of substitutions, the injury of Pablo Aritio left us with 10 men for the last 10 minutes. For most of those 10 minutes, plus the added 6, it looked like we would hold out. However, disaster struck once more in the dying moments of the game. A long throw-in was insufficiently dealt with and through another scramble Surrey managed to get the equaliser with less than a minute to go.

Next week Anglia Ruskin 6 awaits us in the Cup, a game in which we cannot afford to give away silly goals like we did against Surrey, Chichester and Portsmouth.

Other fixture: RHULFC 3 1–2 Portsmouth 5. Goal scorer: Dan Stevens.