On Sunday, 6th November, Brentwood Handball Club made the relatively short trip up the A12 to the University of Essex at Colchester for their first match of the 2011/2012 Development League season.

The team started strongly with good defence from the whole team and goals from Chris Baker restricting their opposition, Cranfield University, to a 5:3 lead after the first 20 minutes.Brentwood then suffered a set back with Mark Cory twisting his ankle which would keep him out of the rest of the game. This left the Brentwood team with no subs available for the remainder of the game and Cranfield, with their large squad of 13 players, were able to bring fresh players on at regular intervals and scored a further 9 goals in quick succession before half time against a tiring Brentwood team.

After a half time team talk from coach Hans-Jörg Küller Rabaça, Brentwood started the 2nd half strongly with goals from Sean Briscomb, George Thorpe, and another goal from Chris reducing the Cranfield lead. Despite having no subs available for the 2nd half and several 2 minute suspensions reducing the team to 5 court players, great defence work from the Brentwood team, including the experience of Dave Rimell and Phil Duffield, allowed Cranfield to score only 8 goals in the 2nd half, leaving the final score at 22:7 to Cranfield.

Considering Brentwood only had 7 players for most of the game and that this was our first game of the season, this was a great result and a good platform to build on for the rest of the season when the team will have a larger squad and experienced players back. This game saw an impressive debut for Boris who has joined Brentwood Handball Club as part of his Everyman Olympian challenge (you can follow him at http://everymanolympian.blogspot.com).

Man of the match though for Brentwood had to be goalkeeper David Hendrick, who made numerous great saves and was continuous in his encouragement and advice for the players on the court.

Courtesy of Tom Smith we can provide you with some excellent action shots of the match.Brentwood's next game is on Saturday, 26th November, against University of Essex away at the Cranfield University Sports Hall.