Teddington's impressive start

TEDDINGTON opened impressively in beating Stroitel of Belarus 3-1 in the European Cup-Winners' Cup in 's Hertogenbosch yesterday but may well regret that they did not score more goals. Their coach, Jon Royce, commenting on their performance, said: "From green to tee first class, putting weak."

With Jason Laslett dominating the midfield along with Phil McGuire it was Teddington all the way and it was no surprise when Nick Conway opened the scoring 21 minutes into the game.

Peter Kermode, who had just replaced the injured Danny Haydon, provided a perfect cross for Conway to dive in at the post to prod the ball home.

Four minutes into the second half a splendid move involving Tony Colclough, Laslett and Conway was rewarded with a penalty corner. Conway's strike was illegally stopped on the line with McGuire converting the resulting penalty stroke. Conway then burst through to to score his second with a powerful individual effort. With just two minutes left, Viatcheslav scored at Stroitel's only penalty corner of the game - so much had Teddington dominated the exchanges.

Teddington's opponents today, Ekaterinburg of Russia, caused the day's surprise beating Pocztowiec of Poznan 2-0.

Teddington: J Ebsworth; S Nicklin; J Wallis, S Dawkins, B Garrard, A Colclough; D Haydon, J Laslett, P McGuire; J Hauck, N Conway. Substitutes used: C Moraux, A Billson, P Kermode & P Way.

Stroitel: V Bondarenko; N Karpovitch; V Stasiouk, S Drozdov, A Berentchik; A Budnikov, A Toropov, G Kojedoub; I Kalichouk, V Klatchkov, S Mikhnevich. Substitutes used: I Kozeka, I Kozioupa & A Allakhverdian.

Umpires: S Graham (Wal) & E-J van Putten (Neth).