Soggy defeat at Bradford

This week, I come to you with another disappointing tale of woe. Sorry.

We gathered at Bradford, confident this week, we had a good strong team of 13. We were met with a flooded pitch. After much deliberation, it was decided that the pitch was playable, as long as some water was swept off. This kept us all occupied in the pouring rain for a while.

The match started, we were pretty even, we had lots of chances on 50/50 balls, but somehow Bradford seemed to want it more, they were first there and were playing in to space really well. You can tell this is a team that trains together and knows how each other plays. On the wings, Bradford were using their midfielders to spread out our markers, then using this to hit the ball through to the forwards. The fast forwards were then trying to run round our defenders to have a clear shot on goal. This was something we were battling against for all of the game. we got better at marking the space, but this was then leaving the wide midfielders open, and they were getting the ball through to the forwards. It took a lot of time to work out how to mark these. By this time, we were already 2-0 down.

The best way to get to through the Bradford midfield was to break quickly while they were on the attack. This worked really well when Gail took the ball on the break and pass through to Jess who scored our first GOAL of the game. The first half ended 2-1 to Bradford.

We made some changes at half time in the hope that we could cover some of the midfield better and stop Bradford from getting through the gaps. This worked well in the second half and we were able to shut down more of the Bradford attacks. Not enough through, Bradford were still getting through more often than we would like, we were doing what we could to attack back quickly on the break and work the ball around their key players. We had some great scoring opportunities, but couldn’t make the most of them. Soon we found ourselves 3-1 down.

During the second half, we lost Jess, who hobbled off after being hit on the foot. It looked really painful, and Jess has some broken metatarsals (we think) we hope you’re feeling better soon Jess!

As we tired, Bradford were able to find those gaps again and some great passing and moving work from them got them in behind our defensive line again. We found ourselves 4-1 down with 6 minutes to go.

It was a great run through midfield by Kim supported by Jodi and Caz. Her cross to Jodi led to our second GOAL of the game. 4-2 to Bradford.

We weren’t outplayed, which was the frustrating part of this match, Bradford played well and we were unable to capitalise on the chances we had. Credit to Bradford and their passing work, something they must work on very hard in training.

There was no MOM, because I didn’t go to the pub, so you useless lot forgot to do it.

Next week we have Bradford Uni at home, hopefully we can get more from this match.

#matchreport #hockey #batleyladieshc #batley