Hockey: Oxton hold on for comfortable three-nil victory (From Wirral Globe)

Hockey: Oxton hold on for comfortable three-nil victory

2:35pm Tuesday 5th March 2013 in Sport

OXTON  faced Brooklands MU who held the reds to a draw on their home turf earlier in the season, writes Callum McDougall.

However, with no risk of being relegated and no chance of promotion, Brooklands' performance was a little too relaxed and they were punished early in the first half.

Although Brooklands applied some early pressure, they did not look likely to score.

When Oxton started to dominate the possession, chances came thick and fast and they upgraded well in the circle to create possible goals from short corners.

However, no goals came from these opportunities. A goal eventually came from a brilliant arching run from Neil Worrall, who crashed the ball across the goal mouth for Ali Mackenzie to deflect home.

This spurred on the home side who continued their dominance in the first half.

Another goal came in similar fashion to the first, with Ali Mackenzie rolling away from Brooklands' defenders and firing the ball into the bottom left corner.

Oxton went into the half-time break with a 2-0 lead.

When the second period commenced, Oxton continued their good form, creating multiple short corners.

But due to the dry, sunny conditions, they struggled to create any speed on the injection and allowed the Brooklands' defenders to put pressure on the strike.

One short corner was converted from Scottish Senior International Gordon Moore, with a powerful strike, which took a deflection from a Brooklands stick and flew into the top corner.

The last 15 minutes saw Oxton pushing for more goals, however, this allowed Brooklands to counter and they showed signs of maybe grabbing a consolation goal. Oxton's defence was superb and they held Brooklands to a comfortable 3-0 win.

Oxton will look for a similar scoreline next week against relegation-threatened Alderley Edge