Report by Sue Cameron

A double header for the ladies this weekend. A huge thankyou to the nine players who played both games, Chris for coaching on Saturday and to Mim and Julie on Sunday. Your support was truly valuable.

Our first game on Saturday was home against Wanderers 3, we had played this team 1st match of the season, but this was a very different team, bigger, stronger and faster.

With lots of illness and injury we were left without our usual midfield and so defenders and forwards were called into action. We quickly went down a goal and then another and it was clear that our usual formation and style of play wasn’t going to work. Thankfully, we had Coach Chris on the sidelines for this game and seeing the problem he moved people around and we adopted a 4, 4, 2 formation which worked much better.

But it was tough, Gen T spent most of the time on the ground, George took a ball to the arm ( which was good as otherwise it would have been her head!) Lena brought herself off with a bleeding nose (Lena never comes off!) Megan played the whole match with a stinking cold and Amba loved it so much she came back for a second helping on Sunday 🙂

I think all will agree we survived the first half and played better in the second half with plenty of chances but it was not our day. We finally scored late in the second half from a short corner.

Final score – 4-1 defeat
MVP – Kitty and Lena

24 hours later and we faced Winchmore Hill and Enfield in a catch-up game. Bruised and battered 9 of the ladies turned up ready for action , moods were boosted as we had 3 subs, 3 bags of sweets and a couple of dry robes to share ( all were very much needed!).

The quality of hockey played was truly superb and the final score really does not reflect the game. Both goal keepers were outstanding, without whom this could have been a very high scoring game.

Though the oppo are our local rivals – a nice touch at the end came from their goal keeper – saying to our goal scorer – “that was a truly excellent strike – really well done” …. it would have been nicer if she had let us score a few more goals mind you…..

Final score 1-1 draw
MVP – Millie