A grumpy review

This week, we were playing at Thirsk, an hour drive away. We only had ten. Now I'm not saying you all had a poor excuse... No actually, I am. We could have won if you lot had bothered to make the effort. Instead, the few of us who went left exhausted and frustrated by a game that we knew we could have made more of. Anyway. That's the scolding. On to the match.

We started slightly unsteadily aware of being a man down and waiting to see where the gap would appear. In the first few minutes it was clear that the midfield would be switching and changing as we marked the Thirsk players and covered the space. Defence was steady, although a very hungover Helen did accidentally kick the ball off the back line and get told off by the umpire.

The first goal was a bit off a wet one really. We'd not really found our feet and we let them get in too easily. Batley were 1-0 down.

After this we started to get it together and were marking better, talking to each other, and generally keeping the ball out of our D. We had most of our 10 players behind the ball for most of the match as we had a constant battle to keep Thirsk at bay.

The first half ended 1-0 and we were quite pleased with our performance.

The second half was when we started to tire. Thirsk had about 95 subs (or at least or felt that way) and had fresh legs on the pitch every few minutes. Soon after the restart, a scramble in the batley D left us 2-0 down. This was soon followed by a short corner that was hit cleanly in to the back of our net 3-0 down.

Hilary found herself needing medical attention after a lifted ball from a Thirsk player hit her in the mouth. Credit to her for playing on despite the huge hole in the lip. Shortly after this Emily went down with a hit on the knuckle, another painful injury that stopped the match for a while. Nop both of you are starting to heal now!

Our shortage of players an fatigue was really playing a part now. Eventually Thirsk capitalised again and we went 4-0 down. We were really struggling to get the ball through to the forwards and everything we tried continually came back at us. Vicky finally managed to get the ball out wide to Fretters, only for her to miss it, fall over and hilarioiusly earn herself DOD.

The game ended 4-0. A disappointing match result MOM was awarded to the whole team because we all played out of our skins.

#matchreport #batleyladieshc #batley #hockey #short