Depleted Parkes go down fighting against Wanderers in Orange

WANDERERS started their men’s Premier League Hockey season exactly the way they wanted - with a win.

Playing in Orange on Saturday, the home side led 3-2 at the break before going to topple Parkes United 5-4.

Wanderers co-coach Pete Shea liked what he saw from his players in their first game of the season.

“It’s good to start the year with a win, which is positive,” Shea said.

“The way we played in attack was very positive for our first game together. We’ve got three or four new people in that system, so just to work on that attack was pretty good.

“You’re not going to lose too many games with five goals on the board.”

Matt Johnson opened the scoring for the Wanderers in the 10th minute but Matt Job levelled it up seven minutes later off the back of a Parkes counter-attack.

Back-to-back goals to Hayden Dillon and Adam Skelton pushed the Wanderers out to 3-1 before Brad Gardiner nailed his shot from another Parkes counter-attack.

This meant Wanderers had a one-goal lead at the break.

They extended it to two eight minutes into the second half when Luke Skelton showed off some speedy skills to score.

Parkes came back again, this time through Aaron Huppatz who slammed his short corner opportunity into the back of the goal.

Wanderers were up 5-3 with 14 minutes left on the clock after Johnson nailed his second for the day on a short corner.

Parkes, who only had the minimum 11 players, continued to fight and closed the gap to 5-4 with 11 minutes to go when Job scored his second off another speedy counter.

Discipline became a problem in the final 10 minutes as both teams had players given short breaks by the umpires but Wanderers managed to hold on for the win.

Parkes senior player Ben Hawken said his players had to be proud of their effort in a difficult season-opener.

“We had our backs against the wall,” Hawken said.

“We missed eight players from our starting line-up from the last game last year. So, to come up with a side and be competitive, it’s not a bad thing.”

Hawken admitted his team’s counter-attack was a key part of their game plan due to having no substitutes available.

“You can’t push blokes up and you can’t run subs to keep people running through the mid-field, so the basic game plan was to compress defence and try and make them go wide and wait for an error and then we counter-attacked,” he explained.

At the other end, Shea said his side needed to improve its defence.

“We conceded some easy opportunities for them and we can’t afford to do that. We’ve got to make it hard for teams to score. Hopefully that will evolve,” Shea said.

Shea was impressed with Matt Johnson and Keiran Gentles and added their experience would be key this season. The co-coach was also happy with the form of the side’s younger players.

For Parkes, goalkeeper Cooper Byrnes played his first PLH game and performed well under pressure, making some strong saves.

ORANGE WANDERERS 5 (Matt Johnson 2, Hayden Dillon, Adam Skelton, Luke Skelton) def PARKES UNITED 4 (Matt Job 2, Brad Gardiner, Aaron Huppatz).