Six--all - 12-goal hockey 'stalemate'! (From Daily Echo)

Six--all! Winchester in 12-goal hockey 'stalemate'!

11:00am Wednesday 31st October 2012 in Sport

Hamble 6 Winchester 6 – a Hampshire/Surrey Regional League, Division 2 goal fest, the outcome of which was in doubt until the final whistle.

With three minutes left, table topping Winchester were 6-4 down and staring at their first defeat of the season.

But last gasp goals by Stuart Swift and Rob Craddock rescued the situation and gave Winchester a remarkable point.

Such a bizarre scoreline was almost unthinkable in the opening quarter as Winchester raced into a 2-0 lead through a Stuart Tognarelli brace.

Hamble responded by pressing Winch-ester much higher and as a result won a penalty stroke which Mark Maunsell dispatched.

Minutes later Paul Barber drilled a penalty corner past Ally Birch.

Hamble didn’t let up, as Matt Cross made it 3-2 to leave Winchester coach Jem Evans having to re-script his half-time team talk.

When Winchester fell 4-2 behind to a Nick Williams goal after the break, it looked all over bar the proverbial shouting.

Tognarelli’s drag flick – the Longparish cricketer’s hat-trick strike - got Winchester back in it, but a second Matt Cross goal tipped it back in Hamble’s favour at 5-3.

There was no respite to the scoring as Tognarelli stretched his personal tally to four and cut the deficit once again.

Winchester’s rally looked to be doomed when Giles Matthews made it 6-4 to Hamble, but Winchester weren’t finished and, in a spectacular finale, scored twice more to salvage a draw.

With Hamble reduced to nine players due to two yellow cards, Tognarelli dribbled cleanly around the advancing defenders to pick out Stuart Swift to make it 6-5.

Then, with the clock ticking down, Tognarelli won the ball at the top of the ‘D’ and found Stuart Swift, whose diagonal pass flashed across the Hamble goalmouth and deflected past Steve Chalcraft by the diving Craddock for the six-all equaliser.

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