3^rd December 2011

0-1  loss

When last we met, we drew with Aquila and we presently sat one above them on the ladder. Even though we only had one sub, we were all prepared to put up a good fight and make three wins in a row into four!

In the pre-match pep talk, Chappy reminded us that Aquila were a team of two strong players. From first whistle, the two players were obvious. They were both were very skillful with the ball and played off each other challenging our defenders often with two-on-one set pieces. In the first 5 minutes, Aquila were erroneously awarded a short corner off a non-deliberate shot that went over the back line. Disappointingly they converted to take the score to 0-1.

For the remainder of the half we held them back. Joss valiantly marked their strongest player, the centre mid #2. But she used this to her team’s advantage, creating space so their other strong player, #45, could drive the ball up the centre. They threatened our D on multiple occasions but we held them off.

At half time Chappy implored us to find our demons inside. We’ve found gusto in the previous games when our backs were against the wall and now was the time to draw on that again. They might have two good players…which meant they had 9 others who were average. Hadn’t we noticed that the two backs had missed EVERY ball that had come near them?

We took to the field with renewed vigour. It showed and we dominated Aquila for the entire 35 minutes with majority time spent in their half. Maya made some determined runs up the right hand side and Joss moved the ball around skillfully in the centre but to no avail. Unfortunately we weren’t able to capitalise on our short corners and a couple of strong shots into their D went begging. Before we knew it, the whistle had blown for full time.

For a bit of a laugh to take your mind off the loss – check out the photo of the day’s casualty!