Derby win and late luck at Cardiff seals flying start

Lacrosse Bath City are setting the early pace in West 1 Divisionafter making a flying start to the season.

The team took voluntary relegation last term, but, following an 11-10 win over Cardiff Harlequins, City triumphed in their local derbyagainst the University of Bath 16-4 to score their sixth win infive meetings.

Bath City maintained the policy of blooding new players as much aspossible, this time giving 16 year olds Jake Beck and Darren May somequality field time.

The University took the lead in the first minute, however thegreater experience of the City side shone through, allowing themthe luxury of an 8-1 advantage by half-time.

City took the opportunity to introduce some new players and thisallowed the University to gain some confidence, making the second andthird quarters a lot closer.

Two of the new players managed to bag goals, with Tom Richiemaking a nice cut to take a Dougie Mackay feed, resulting in the ballflying into the bottom corner of the goal, and Gareth Shellardbeating two defence men on a fine solo run before firing home.

The other City scorers were Dave Hartshorne (3), Peter Short (4),Peter Cornelius (2), Matt Wellings, Ken Murray (3) and Mackay.

The highlight of the game was a long pole behind the head passfrom Jay Shemenski to clear the ball upfield to Jake Beck.

In City's first game of the season, they had the Cardiff keeper tothank for a dramatic late winner.

With very little separating the sides, a tense final period wasset up and, with 43 seconds on the clock, Bath were a goal down.

However, a fantastic drive from Simon Griffiths with a finish tomatch levelled the scores.

Facing off with 23 seconds left, Bath went for the win, butGrindle in the Cardiff goal calmly saved the resulting shot.

Then, in his rush to get the ball downfield for an attempt at awinner with three seconds remaining, he dropped the ball out of theback of his stick and into his own goal.

The highlight of the game was an amazing goal from Mark Jefferybefore he headed off to Afghanistan with the Army, and a crackingeffort from 16-year-old Mike Carey

The other scorers were Short (2), Mackay, Nik Roberts (2) andMurray (2).