Ladies 5s 0 - 6 Aylesbury L3s

Today's match was a bit of a tricky one. We knew going in that it'd be tough, especially given their position in the league and our line up containing a few semi-injured people plus a couple who would be playing out of their regular positions. Despite this we had a good warm up and started the game high-energy.

They pushed us really hard from the off - a lot of the first 10 minutes were in out half but we did well and held our own. There was a lot of us running up the middle of the pitch which resulted in it being put straight back down into our D from a big hitter they had at the back.

At one point their striker stepped into the D and took a cracking shot that Kiera saved like a real pro, taking it on her chest and stick, even losing a small chip of her stick in the process!

After more hard work and a lot of running, they managed to make a break for it and while we were running to get back and protect Kiera she was left by herself and they managed to put it in the goal.

Our heads seemed to drop after that and we got a bit down. It seemed like because of this despite us working hard we left Kiera by herself twice more that resulted in us conceding two more goals.

We had 4 attacking shorts in a row but despite changing things up we didn't manage to convert them which was very frustrating.

At half time we had a talk reiterating that we needed to keep our energy up and we spoke about using Bex's tip from training for working back and taking the shortest path to the D. We also talked about stepping up to the opposition and letting them have less time on the ball.

The second half was much more scrappy and both teams tried to play down the middle, with a lot of ping-ponging the ball back and forth with very little effect.

There were 3 goals in the second half too, but there were a lot less attempts as Kiera was really on it and stepped up to their attackers several times getting more aggressive, cutting down their angles and putting them off so their shots went wide or so she could make some solid saves.

Unfortunately they did score three times - one slipped in by the post, one was a solid shot from the edge of the D dropped into the back corner despite our best efforts and the last one was put in off a loose player on the back post.

We had a lot of defensive shorts that we did a great job in clearing - they didn't convert any of their shorts which was very satisfying. Tegan stepped up and did a great job her first week participating in the defensive shorts.

The match ended on a defensive short that we were unlucky to have conceded, but we managed to keep that out too.

Man of the match had a few different nominations this week but went to Kiera in the end, she really stepped her game up this week and the score would've been lot worse if she hadn't played so well.