Goals galore as ‘Cheery Chid’ takes on Penzance in Bahrain

HMS Chiddingfold’s football team started their deployment football ‘season’ with an emphatic win over HMS Penzance in the sweltering heat of the Bahraini summer.

The teams squared up to each other at the Bahrain Rugby Club.  The Club is familiar to many of the MCMV Crews as a venue that continues to support deployed RN teams with the use of their excellent facilities.

'Cheery Chid’s’ team was apprehensive prior to kick off as HMS Penzance’s matching yellow strip was a bit more co-ordinated than Chiddingfold’s cobbled together kit.

With the temperature over 40 degrees the teams elected to play thirds rather than halfs, and each of 20 minutes.  Over the course of the match, Chiddingfold's team came together and managed to overcome Penzance to win the match 3 – 0 despite some stand out performances from some of Penzance’s team.

The teams Captain ET(ME) ‘Spike’ Hughes said, “…it was our first game together and despite not having any kit, boots or prior game time we managed to pull together as a team. Every player worked hard to get the win but Man of the Match has to go to AB(MW) ‘Digger’ Gardiner who used his speed and agility to score a hat trick.”

Keeping a ‘clean sheet’ in goal was the Manager and goal keeper Lieutenant James Carpenter.

After the arduous match when he was tested on several occasions he commented that, “…it was fantastic to see a team working so well together from the offset.

"We will take this victory forward and use the momentum to try to beat our sister ship HMS Middleton in our next match.”