Ladies 5's vs Staines

It was an early start at Staines when Maidenhead ladies 5’s met to play Staines 3’s. After a warm up in the chilly Saturday morning air we were ready to go.

Staines had pushback and started hard, they drove down to the D and we spent the first part of the game defending hard and trying to get the ball out.

They won a short corner and unfortunately managed to find the back of the net.
We responded to this by driving the ball up the pitch, Kacey made a strike that lifted the ball. Staines keeper deflected it but Meghan got the ball under control and scored. This brought us to 1-1.

Staines responded to this by working hard to get the ball in our half. We defended hard with Jess, Helen, Ali and Mia at the back but Staines won another short corner which they converted into a goal.
We still worked hard and had some lovely attempts at goal that just missed, including several fantastic shots by Lesley Anne. Cerys also made a fantastic ball to the baseline just as we had been practicing in training but unfortunately no one got there in time.
Staines worked back to our D and after some ping ponging around the D they managed to score again.
This brought the half time score to 3-1.

After a team talk from Paul we were ready to get back out there.
We switched ourselves in and we’re determined that Staines were not going to score and we were!
During this half there were 4 defensive short corners but this time we defended each and the ball didn’t get in the goal. LA ran out 1 and cleared that ball out!
We had some lovely play up the wins with Lucy carrying the ball up to Sasha. We tried our hardest to get into the D and had a few near misses at goal.
After a foot in Staines D we were awarded a short corner. Kacey pushed out to Mia who made a good attempt to score but Staines cleared the ball out the D.
We quickly won another short in the 65th minute of the game. This time Kacey pushed out to Pippa who wellied it at goal, the keeper defended and Kacey expertly popped it into goal. This brought us to 3-2 and for the final 5 minutes of the game we continued to work hard to try and get that goal to equalise us. Unfortunately we didn’t quite get there but came off the pitch very proud of our performance. We really stepped up our game this week.

LA won player of the match but I would also like to say well done to everyone.