No Flooding here...

The horrible rainy weather, coupled with panicky players after last weeks flooded pitch at Bradford, led to a very grumpy pitch inspector at 8am on Saturday morning. As suspected, our pitch was absolutely fine and the game continued. (That’s the last dig, I promise I won't moan about it again!)

We arrived in the rain ready to face Bradford Uni, we’ve never played these guys before, so weren't really sure what to expect. We had a pretty strong team and were hoping for a win, we really needed one!

As the match began, it became very clear that we had a huge advantage, Bradford Uni only had 8 players.

To say we had a 3 man advantage, we made life really difficult for ourselves. We tend to lean towards lots of dribbling and taking the ball ourselves, and don’t usually pass into the space as much as we should. This playing style, which usually works out ok because we have some strong confident players, was making it hard work this time though, because we weren’t taking advantage of the free players and were allowing ourselves to get tackled. When we did use the space we were moving the ball around well and getting some good attacks in. We managed to win ourselves a few short corners and although scoring took longer than it should have, our first GOAL was tapped in by Kim on the line after a bit of a scramble in the D. It’s possible that Kim stole this from Jo, although no one really remembers!

The second GOAL was very memorable, a great cross in to the D was deflected by Ashley up in to to the top of the net. Great placement by Ashley!

At halftime we were 2-0 up, but were still making it hard work, we had started to pass the ball around more towards the end of the half, and needed to keep that up.

The second half was our chance to make more of the space on the pitch, we knew where each other were and were passing the ball around better. Bradford Uni had some good key players, and were able to get the ball up the pitch on the break quite quickly. We were mostly able to close them down with our player advantage, but occasionally they did get through and we found ourselves facing some short corners. Our defence kept them out admirably until a ball on its way in to the goal was kept out by a foot rather than a stick and we were facing a penalty. Helen saved the flick! She played it down, but really to keep your head and make the save is always brilliant, even if they do hit it at you!

Our central players, Kim, Gail and Fretters were working hard and Vicky and Newby were trying to keep out on the wings to make the most of the space on the pitch. Some great balls got out to both of them and we found ways to switch and move the play to keep attacking. Kims second GOAL of the game was a great shot from the centre of the D. Batley were now 3-0 up.

We continued to attack and get the ball round the Bradford defence. More attacks on goal lead to Newby scoring our fourth GOAL of the game with a shot in to the corner from the rebound. 4-0.

The game ended on 4-0 and Kim got MOM excellent work in the centre and 2 goals!

Next week it's an early early match at Ben Rhydding. Now there’s a pitch that really could be flooded!!

#matchreport #batley #batleyladieshc #hockey