A Tale of 2 Halves

This week we have a 2 in 1 match report. Firstly, I owe an apology to Fretters, in the last match report I failed to mention that she set up the second goal. Fretters received the slip from the short corner and crossed it in for Vicky to finish. It was a great goal.

Last week we took on Leeds Adel away, at the horrible time of 4:30pm. We have quite a good record against Adel, we’ve beaten them in previous seasons and in the summer league, so with a 15 strong team, we thought we had a pretty good chance. When we played them just before christmas we only had 10, and they had no keeper. You can read about that here.

As the game started, it became apparent that, although we were quite equally matched, something we were doing was putting us always on the back foot. We were slow to the ball and not using the space at all. Our forwards were getting in the way of our midfield, the midfield was getting in the way of the defence, no one was really marking properly and when we did get the ball there was no where to go. There was one point where we had 5 players (and their respective marks) within a 2 metre area of each other and we were wondering why we weren’t getting anywhere. That said, we did manage to have some chances, which we unfortunately didn’t do anything with and Adel managed a scrappy goal that meant they won 1-0. Gail spent half the match on the floor, earning her comment from the umpire of “she’s like an 8 year old boy throwing herself in to everything and ending up on the floor all the time”, credit to her for effort though. I’m not going to dwell on this match, safe to say we weren’t at our best and it was just one of those games. MOM went to Helen and Sarah, who were both brilliant. Helen saved our skin several times and Sarah was all over the pitch.

Fast forward to this week. We had Cleckheaton at home, a rearranged match that was called off the other week. We had a team of 13. when we played Cleckheaton in our first match of the season, they beat us 1-0.

The game started and immediately it was clear that we were on it this week. There was great space on the pitch, people knew where each other were, we were passing between us, taking it round Cleckheaton and keeping most of the possession.

Midfield worked really well together knowing where each other was, covering the gaps well in the press and keeping the ball up the field. It became a master class in how to put the ball around the goal rather than in it. Cleckheaton’s keeper kept foiling us and stopping our shots, as did their centre back. Linda had to go off injured just before half time, we’ll be gutted if you’re written out again Linda, so we hope you’re feeling better!

At half time, despite having most of the possession and looking like the stronger team, we were still 0-0.

Cleckheaton were leaving one of our midfielders unmarked quite a lot, this was giving us more time on the ball and a chance to switch play across the pitch and in to space. In the second half, we continued to play as we had. We were still getting attack after attack. Vicky was making great moves down the right and putting us in some really strong attacking positions. It was one of Gails attacks on goal that lead to her being taken out by the keeper, her spectacular flight through the air was a sight to behold and won us a flick!

After our usual discussion of “Anyone want this?”, “you take it”, “I’ll take if no one wants it”, Jenni stepped up to take the flick. Cool, calm and collected she easily placed it in the top corner. The perfect penalty! Batley were 1-0 up! There should be a picture, but our spectators/subs let us down, so here's a picture of Jenni instead.

Still unable to score in open play, the game ended 1-0 to Batley. A great win for us, it was such a pleasure to play in such a brilliant game. MOM went to Jenni who did some great supporting work with the midfield and scored a fantastic penalty!

#matchreport #hockey #batleyladieshc #batley