Brief summary by Dave Thomas

The third and final leg of the Oxford mini tour took place under blazing sunshine, and Cardiff city started in confident mood. Pitched against eventual winners Woking, city looked the more fluent team for large periods of the game and took the lead twice with well worked moves from both ends. As the game wore on, simple chances including a penalty were not taken (Dave the main culprit here!!!) and in the end a 3-3 draw was probably a fair reflection of the game. Note to Midge. And while I'm on the subject: Another note to Midge

City continued to dominate against last month's third placed side, Oxford Brookes. A 2-0 victory here was comfortable enough, but in reality, some stifling defence meant Cardiff spent the vast majority of the game attacking Brookes' basket. Cally and Kate belied their height disadvantage again and again to grab plenty of rebounds, which restricted Brookes' shot-happy boys to one go each attack. Neither end attacked very well though, Dan's simple running in shot and a rebound stick-back from Elaine was all Cardiff had to show for numerous easy attempts, and even with the newbie ref missing a couple of blatant penalties, it's unlikely on our current form we'd have put any of them in!

With Cardiff sitting top of the group a win or draw would have put us through to the semis, but the vagaries of the seeding system meant we had to play another strong side in Oxford City. This national league outfit also made the final, so although we lost 6-2, there was no real need to feel disappointed. Oxford made a storming start to roar into a 4-0 lead and city were never going to come back from that. The second half of the match was much more even though, as a well worked free pass from Josh and yet another running in shot from 'goal-a-game' Dan cancelled out two more goals from Oxford. Josh also took the run of missed penalties to 12!

In the plate semi final Exeter were again put to the sword. Unfortunately for this vastly improved side they came up against Cardiff's best performance of the day. In a match that had everything Midge finally broke the penalty jinx and Josh cleverly used the post to deflect a pass over a would be interceptor's head. Dan nearly knocked the post over which kinda ruined James' long shot and 5 players contributed to a 7-2 win. A couple of late hail-mary passes from Dave only served to bash Cally on the wrist and earn him a telling off, but the game was comfortably in the bag by then with Elaine and Midge both dominating their opponents and Dan boring everyone with another running in shot.

So the plate final (or 5th/6th playoff as it was known before the marketing people got to it) was against a surprisingly underperforming Abingdon. At this point Cardiff forgot how to pass the ball out of defence and a couple of spaz attacks gifted Abingdon 2 early goals. Normal penalty service was resumed as Elaine missed two in the space of a minute and with the sun out again, city opted against half-killing themselves in pursuit of a draw (another penalty shootout would have been too embarrassing anyway) and settled for a dignified 3-2 defeat.

So we finished up 6th again which somehow placed us 4th overall and won us a nice bottle of plonk, which Josh promptly snaffled. The tour itself was a resounding success, with three well run mini-tournaments taking place in gorgeous weather and a sporting, friendly atmosphere contributing to three tremendous days out. Big thanks to Paul Meaney and Oxford City for all their efforts in making the whole experience so enjoyable - we'll be back next year!!

Elaine shows the correct technique for penalties - and adds to our list of failures from the spot		Another entry for the 'Midge looking daft' gallery

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