Mother’s Days may come and go as far as the Men’s sides are concerned, but for the Women’s league they are a major distraction. Thus it was that both sides barely mustered 12 players last Sunday. While our beloved Assistant Manager Emma had to dust off her boots to fill the substitute’s role, Sutton had clearly lost a few players to their U23s side; so with us needing to put some space between the two sides in the table, the outcome was looking unpredictable. After a slightly delayed start while the Referee engaged in stimulating conversation with our resident lino Alan Percival, the game got off to an uncertain beginning with both sides searching for some rhythm. Not an unusual state of affairs for us, though thankfully we managed to avoid conceding our customary early goal. As we began to settle, the football started to flow and it was not long before we started to create chances. Becks was taking time to find her range however, and two or three efforts flew wide of the target. Around 20 minutes in, Becks finally threw off her electric blanket and two of her three sets of gloves to slot home from Kirsty’s delicious through ball. Ten minutes later and Becks turned provider, skilfully laying off the ball into Meg’s path, who thumped a shot over the keeper’s head and into the net.

Shortly afterwards Meg needed to take a break, and Emma bounded onto the field like a spaniel let off its leash as Manager Dave reorganised the side. Sutton then took advantage of this momentary distraction to break our back line and reduce the arrears; an isolated incident as the back four, ‘marshalled’ by skipper Rachel (see what I did there?) and ably assisted by sweeper-keeper Hannah, had otherwise been untroubled.

Half-time break, and the feeling was that we just had to stay calm and more goals would come. Sure enough, we only had to wait a couple of minutes before Becks added her second, Laura having set her up with a short pass inside the penalty area after Gemma had a shot blocked. Now the girls clicked up a gear and began to dominate the game with some impressive football. Meg came back on after Linsey, who had been outstanding at the back, took a break following a nasty knock to her knee. After 75 minutes the Carr/Michaelson combo struck again, with Becks completing her hat-trick to make it 4-1. By this stage the most concern was whether Hannah Lees and Woody would be late for their Stormzy concert, whoever he is, and whether Wiki would take a legal throw-in. Kirsty skipped the last 10 minutes having run the midfield in her slippers up to then, and Linsey returned having tested her knee with some vigorous hobbles along the touchline. With a minute to go a long punt by Hannah Smith was touched on by Laura (yes Hannah it’s been confirmed by VAR) and Becks ran through to score her fourth and complete a Player-of-the-Match performance.

All-in-all an outstanding team performance, full of 12 strong individual contributions. Two more performances like this and we will have a strong chance of collecting those valued club runners-up medals, which would be just reward for an encouraging season. Let’s go girls!!

Match details

Match date

Sun 27 Mar 2022

Kickoff

14:00

Team overview