Men's 1sts go top!!!
Men's 1sts team have gone top of the league, with 5 games to go, following a 6-2 win over Chapeltown 2nds.
Chapeltown 2nds 2 - 6 Halifax 1sts
Scorers : Graham M (3), Bamforth, Sutcliffe, Dransfield
The Halifax Mens 1st X1 completed their 3rd win in a row to keep their promotion hopes alive and rise to top of the league in the process.
The game against Chapletown in South Yorkshire started with Chapletown dominating possession and Paul Graham, Dave Wheatley, Simon Arch and Michael Jones were far busier in the Halifax defence than they hoped to be with keeper Matthew Metcalfe making some good saves.
As the game went on the visitors started to gain more possession and with Matthew Bairstow, Jake Bamforth and Matthew Graham attacking, there were always a big threat.
Matthew Graham opened the scoring firing in from close range after Michael Jones's initial shot had been blocked.
A second goal quickly followed when a sweeping move down the right saw Bamforth slip the ball to Graham who drew the keeper before squaring the ball to Josh Sutcliffe who had the easiest of tap ins.
Graham then got a 2nd goal striking the ball sweetly into the corner from a well worked penalty corner move. 3-0 at half time and it seemed that the team were cruising.
An injury to Veteran Paul Graham forced a reshuffle in defence and this seemed to cause problems for Halifax as Chapletown started to cause problems and it was not a surprise when they got a goal back.
Chapeltown then quickly got a second and some alarm bells were ringing
The turning point was a top class save from Metcalfe to deny Chapletown a equalising goal. From this save Halifax broke up the other end of the pitch to score a 4th goal - Ryan Dransfield drifting in on the far post to slip the ball home after the Chapletown keeper had made a good save from Graham.
Halifax never looked back from here with Graham completing his hat trick flicking the ball into the roof of the net after a good set up from Jones.
Leigh Walker and Peter Bamforth helped ensure the Halifax defence was more secure and Jake Bamforth completed the scoring with an excellent deflection goal to complete the scoring.
6-2 win
Next week the team travel to 2nd place York who are one of their main challengers for the 2 promotion places.