L 1-3 Captain Jo Price
On another blue sky sunny day we fielded a squad of 16 providing a variety of positional combos and some chances of a breather for everyone.
Our youthful forward line with a combo of the Dickin twins Chloe and Lauren, Clem McQoid , Emily Argyrou and fresh from last week’s hat-trick , Eva Spithout- were full of running and surging forward into the ‘D’ created a number of scoring opportunities. However, they met with stout defence from the H& W back line who showed their experience by consistently picking off the ball and counter attacking through their midfield.
Still it was against the run of play when ten minutes into the first half a strike inside our defensive circle ricocheted off our sweeper’s stick and into the back of the net.
H&W were now feeling confident that they could repel our attacks and create further opportunities of their own.
Despite Southgate forcing a succession of PC ‘s the opposition defensive runner was quickly out to our receiver involving a couple of shots which sliced spectacularly into the air.
A counter attack down their right caused , a deflection from a defensive stick wrong –footing Flutes Gk Helen Argyrou – just back after surgery – and H&W had their 2nd goal.
Within minutes they had added a third – a shot on goal was parried but landed in the path of an oncoming forward who deflected the ball into the net.
The half time score of 3-0 did not reflect the run of play but H&W had exploited their opportunities and Southgate had not been able to find a way through.
In the second half tighter marking from our defensive unit decreased the opposition’s attacking opportunities and helped the midfield and forwards to keep pushing for the elusive goal. This finally came with Chloe Dickin making a strong run through the middle, opening up their defence and cracking a very good ball past their excellent young keeper.
Southgate looked the better team in the second half with a strong performance from the defence but despite continued pressure were unable to improve on their scoreline.
The game finished at 1-3 but with the team able to take some satisfaction of recovering to win the second half 1-0.