COWHC Ladies 1s vs Old Kingstonians - 5 March 2016

Oh well. There's not much to write about the first half. It was pretty poor and we gave OKs a 3-0 lead without them having to work too hard. The main highlight was a young teenage OKs player somehow managing to stop a lightning short corner strike on the line with her eyes tightly closed. And Duncs made her return foray into midfield and showed us that she can still up-end the best of them with those devilish reverse stick 'all or nothing' tackles.

The second half was a different story and all credit to the gladiatorial COWs for fighting their way back. Bit by bit we forced our way into some attacking positions. It was playing simple possession hockey that allowed us to do this, and stringing together short passes to each other, rather than offering the ball to the opposition for them to run away with it to their attacking D. Although we lost Duncs to a nasty lip-filler injury, we continued to press on and, in the ultimate show of self-sacrifice, Rachel slipped the ball back in the D for Alex to fire home our opening goal. This was quickly followed by our second goal which flew into the top right corner of the net. Unfortunately the umpires spotted it had been struck from 7 metres outside the circle, so it was cruelly disallowed.

We finished with a 4-1 loss, which now sees us in the relegation zone. Next week is the final league match of the season, and so we have to play the 70 minutes of hockey against Old Crans that will see us piece together all the latent talent, potential, hard work, industry, endeavour, resolve, endurance, stamina and battling blood, sweat and tears that will bring us those crucial 3 points. Oh, and we must also pray that Guildford lose. COME ON THE MIGHTY COWs.

Thanks to Martin for umpiring, to Hoops for spurring us on and to Sharon, AJ and Chris for their sideline encouragement.

The team was: Kate, LBell, Santy, Dicko, Lena, Rachel, Duncs, Alex, Emma, Caitlin, Andrea, Amelia and Nicky.

PoM votes were 0.5 each for Dicko, Nicky and Duncs, 1 each for Andrea, Santy and Lena, 1.5 for Emma and (I quote Nicky's Whatsapp) running away with it this week with her super goal from outside the 23 with 8 votes! Super duper Alex! (Obviously I'd be much too modest to write that about myself ...)