Ladies 5s Play Frozen Friendly
By Ciara Aldous
Ladies 5s 2 – 3 London Edwardians L2 (friendly)
Whilst we only played a friendly this Saturday, we still of course have to award both MOM and DOD. MOM this week goes to Charlie Ambridge. As always she was consistent, hardworking and reliable in our back line. From constant calling to awesome tackles, she was strong from the first whistle. Well done Charlie!
DOD this week, despite protesting, goes to myself. My comment of, “Surely if you have bigger feet your shoes cost more,” seemed to beat Ruby turning up to the wrong pitch and Molly’s tango-brow. But hey, at least the onesie will keep me warm next week!
Match report:
We arrived at Oaken Lane and were not so pleasantly surprised to see that the far baseline and D was frozen and iced over. After much deliberation between myself, London Eds captain and our two umpires, it was deemed unplayable. However, the opposition had travelled far and we were all still willing to give them a good game of hockey, so a friendly was played!
The first half saw us defending with an even smaller ‘D’, making the job of our defenders even tougher. Charlie and Freya however stepped up, making solid tackles and blocking them at any opportunity. We managed to hold them off, with our half backs running the ball out of the defence up the line to our waiting midfielders. Through lots of running from Elsie and Gaby, we worked the ball up the pitch with Val taking it from the 25, into the D and giving us a 1-0 lead! Unfortunately, London Eds responded with a goal of their own. Despite some amazing saves from Saffy, they took full advantage of the smaller ‘D’ and managed to roll one into the back corner.
Coming out of half time at 1-1 we were ready to give another fighting effort for the second half. This half saw us having the benefit of the smaller ‘D’. Ruby worked the hard, chasing down their transfers, with the pressure putting them off the ball to where Jess was waiting. And there goes another goal! 2-1 and the win is back in her hands, we just needed to hold onto it!
Once again, Ed’s responded with another goal despite all our efforts. The last ten minutes saw Ciara dropping back into defence due to Charlie Brown having to sub from injury – she was definitely a loss on the pitch!
We were tiring and a momentarily lapse in concentration and marking saw to Ed’s slipping another in between the posts. We ended the game 3-2 but not for want of trying. We still have the league game against them to get our own back, which I'm sure we will!
We’ll get ‘em next time girls! Onto next week, another match and hopefully those all important three points too.