Oxfordshire Korfball Association

Basingstoke recorded their first two victories of the regional league in their away double header in Cardiff.  The first game was against Cardiff Dragons, who had beaten BBKC by one goal in the reverse fixture before Christmas.  The scoreline once again reflected the similarities between the two teams as Basingstoke recorded a 14-13 victory.  Louisa Gillies returned to action with 6 goals and Viktor Bogdanov held league top scorer Remco Broekhuis at bay expertly.

The second game saw the Bulls take on a Cardiff Uni team in preparations for nationals.  It took Basingstoke a while to break down the rebound defending but once the lead was established there was only ever one winner.  Louisa again showed why she has been missed in the first team with four goals to take her days tally to 10!  Final score was 10-5.

OKA players are going to take on OKA players in the last preparation match before the Inter-area.  This friendly is going to take place on 24th January in Kidlington and it's going to be the last opportunity to catch an eye of our coach Graham Box who is going to take his selected team to the Inter-area tournament 2012 taking place on 12th February in Nottingham.

OKA are organising another invite-only session on Saturday 7th January and selected 18 players across the OKA clubs have been invited.  This session will be three hours long, starts at 12 o'clock in Abingdon White Horse Leisure Centre and all interested players and coaches are welcome to come and watch the preparation for the Inter-area tournament which is taking place in February.  As usual, this session will be run by our coach Graham Box.

The December OKA meeting minutes are now available on the 'admin docs' page.

You can also click here to read them.

The OKA side rounded off the year with a 10 - 4 win over Cardiff Uni. Cardiff were playing rebound defence, resulting in an early timeout from the OKA coach to re-structure the attacks. The OKA team defended well, restricting Cardiff to just one goal in the first half despite Cardiff's rapid attacks. However the OKA attacks were also not working too well, and at half time the score was 4 - 1.

One of Cardiff's girls had been delayed on a train, so they played the first half with an ex-korfballer who hadn't played for 18 months and had just come to watch!

The second half initially looked to go the same way, but then the OKA attacks started to work as planned and became much more structured, enabling repeated multiple-shot attacks with excellent ball recycling. A flurry of goals in the last 15 minutes meant the final score was 10 - 4 to the OKA.

The OKL has come to a standstill and it's time to look at the standings and highlights of the first half of the local league season.  In the first division we've seen a number of close matches and the table is divided into a top half (Oxford Isis, Basingstoke Bulls, Oxford City) and a bottom half (Reading Uni, Abingdon, Oxford Uni).  Basingstoke have only conceded 26 goals in 5 games while the best attack belongs to Oxford Isis (61 goals).  Basingstoke will now have the advantage of playing at home against Oxford Isis which could well be a league winner decider.  But last year's champions, Oxford City, surely haven't said their last words and will try to get the title for a third time in a row.  With the Oxford and Reading Uni teams traditionally getting better in the second half of the season and Abingdon having the potential to upset any team, we can look forward to seeing some very entertaining matches in the next half of the season.

In the second division last year's runners-up Basingstoke Bulls 2 are now top of the table and if they keep on improving the way they have in the first half of the season, they'll find it hard not to win the trophy.  However, Abingdon 2 and last year's champions Oxford Isis 2 are not so far behind and will try to make it at least difficult.  Division 2 is also going to welcome two new teams, Didcot Dragons 2 and Oxford Isis 3.  With every team playing each other this division will now see plenty of matches.

OKA met Basingstoke in their second clash of the regional league season.  Played in Oxford, this match was never going to be easy for Basingstoke who missed many of their key players.  Despite of that they were threatening in attack and solid in defence but overall OKA were the better team and with the experience and some strong individual performances OKA won 16-7.  Both teams are now looking forward to the next regional league matches in December - OKA meet Cardiff Uni and Basingstoke are preparing for the matches against Cardiff Cyclones and Cardiff Dragons.

Both Oxford Uni and Reading Uni are heading to Birmingham this Saturday (3/12/2011) to challenge other university teams from the southern half of Britain.  Eight teams will then qualify for the Student Nationals tournament which will take place in March, top four of these eight will also become seeded.  Wish Oxford and Reading luck!

UPDATE:  Reading finished 5th, Oxford 7th and Elliot from Reading was the most valuable male player of the tournament.  Well done everyone!