Ladies 5's against Newbury & Thatcham

Saturday's match was a wet and slippy one, the rain started on the drive up - and didn't stop for the entire match. Visibility was reduced and the pitch was slippy, stick control was very difficult and there were far more stick tackles than usual because of the heavy, consistent, awful rain.

The first half whizzed past - we only had one sub, an injured Sophie, so everyone was working really hard to cover that. Sadly the first half was not our finest hour, with the opposition scoring 3 times due to us leaving players open and not working back as one.

There was a lot of ping-ponging down the middle, between us and Newbury which was not very effective especially as we were not getting in front of our players enough. We also managed to accidently smack the ball at someone on the oppositions thumb, the first of many injuries of the match.

Things picked up towards the end of the first half with a wonderful near miss from Lindsey and Hayley taking the ball all the way up to the opposition 23!

We finished the half with an incredible save/headbutt from Kiera that kept us in the game.

We had a very rainy half time break that felt about 3 seconds long, but was plenty of time to get even more soaked through and we started to feel cold.

The second half was about 4 times the length of the first, and also about 4 times as rowdy.

We did correct a lot of the issues we had in the first - we used the width of the pitch much better, really did well getting into space and attacking in the D. We really put some pressure on them and Sophie made a cracking shot that slipped in behind the keeper.
There were 3 defensive shorts that we managed to clear, with Katie doing a great job at running one to properly put them off. There were also 3 attacking shorts that we didn't manage to do anything with, but had good attempts with.

The rain started coming down harder and suddenly things went a little off. Sophie scored yet another excellent goal, but got a bit over-zealous in the process and aggravated her injury and had to come off for a while.

Then Anji - despite some excellent 3D skills - got blown up for stick tackling and got sent off with a green card!

We earned another attacking short and Sophie gave it to Katie who put it across to Charlotte who tipped it in to get the score to 3-3!

This was quickly followed up by TJ smacking heads with one of their players, resulting in a bully-off that Katie won for us. Shortly afterward there was an unfortunate tackle that involved TJ and the same opposition player that wound up with that player getting a nosebleed from a wild chip. Once again we have a Bully-off just outside our D, but Katie confidently took it for us.

Somehow there were still 9 minutes left to play in this half. It finishes relatively uneventfully, with the same woman being hit on her thumb again as this pitch is cursed.

Final score was a very respectable 3-3, and Katie got a well earned Man of the Match. With special mention to Tegan for really making right backher own and growning in confidence in the second half (after I had put her in about 3 different places before!).

Well done girls we really turned that game around!