Hampstead and Westminster Ladies made it three consecutive victories with a 4-1 victory away to Clifton in rainy conditions.
The first half was mainly pressure from Hampstead but unable to convert going in to half time with nothing to show for their effort.
However, Hampstead stuck to their guns and eventually wore Clifton down.
It was Lauren Turner who broke the deadlock after Hampstead were awarded a penalty stroke after a brilliant base line attack from Lucy Hyams.
Hampstead's second goal came from Esme Burge who pushed the ball home after a scrap in the D.
In the final quarter as Clifton started to chase the game, good pressure from Fran Tew won Hampstead the ball high up who found Sarah Robetson unmarked at top D who slotted the ball in to the bottom corner to put Hampstead 3-0 up.
Clifton were rewarded for their efforts in the dying moments with a short corner goal, which meant the game ended 3-1.
The men were stunned by Mannheimer HC with a shoot-out defeat after a crazy closing to normal time ended with three goals coming in the last two minutes.
Indeed, Gonzalo Peillat scored with six seconds to go to send it to that shoot-out where Jean Danneberg managed to keep out all of the London club’s efforts, leading to a 2-0 success.
For a long time, it was defences on top with Hampstead and Westminster taking the lead in the 14th minute via corner gun Matt Guise-Brown.
James Sutcliffe’s amazing diving stick – covering behind Toby Reynolds-Cotterill – denied Jan-Philipp Fischer from a brilliant chance while Linus Muller also saved off the line at the far end.
Eventually, Mannheim got level from a scrappy one, Mario Schachner cleaning up in front of goal after a mis-trapped effort was worked around the circle, offering a couple of bites of the cherry for Justus Weigand and Paul Zmyslony.
That was far from the end of the drama as Guise-Brown shot a rocket through the Mannheim corner defences with 100 seconds to go. No matter as Peillat stepped up even later with a low push to make it 2-2.
Into the shoot-out and it was goalkeepers on top with plenty of good saves.
Peillat was was the only man to score in the first four rounds via a stroke won by Raphael Hartkopf as Danneberg and Reynolds-Cotterill made block after block.
And eventually Guido Barreiros put the result to bed with goal two in the fifth round for a 2-0 success.
They did bounce back with a 4-1 win over Three Rock Rovers in their second match.
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