Okehampton 2

Teign 2

The first game back for Okehampton men's first team saw them face a dangerous Teign side. The Oke team were without their captain due to illness. However, the vice-captain, and man of the match Luke Liversidge stepped up well.

Oke started just as they meant to go on, working extremely hard, on and off the ball, which was shown by the midfield of Sam Whalley, Luke Miller, Joff Stephens, Johnny Aylen and Leon Oxenham, who were utterly dominant and controlled proceedings. However, it took a while for the deadlock to be broken.

Late on in the first half, Oke substitute Brett Lawson hit the ball into the D which took a slight knock off a defender's stick and put Okehampton into the lead.

For the rest of the half Okehampton were under a lot of pressure but some sublime tackles from Alex Osman, Luke Liversidge and Will Cooper kept Okehampton in the lead into the second half.

After the break the half started evenly balanced and a scrappy mix up in the Okehampton 'D' led to Teign equalising. From then on, Okehampton applied the pressure. There was hard work from attacker Simon Bourne, who pressurised the Teign defence, enabling Chris Luxton to find himself in a lot of space while Luke Miller and Joff Stephens found it easy to play off him. Their efforts led to many short corners subsequently being won.

A short corner was played to Whalley, who hit the ball to Miller; he hit it and the ball took a sublime deflection to place it past the keeper and putting Okehampton ahead.

From then on many chances were missed and tiredness came into play with both teams making mistakes. However, the Oke defence kept the away side at bay with strong tackles and Cooper saved a ball flicked towards an open net.

In the dying minutes Teign were through and Hayden Bond, who had a reasonably quiet game, stood no chance of stopping the equaliser.

The game ended with a draw which was a good return for Okehampton, with great support from the home fans.