COWHC Ladies' 1s vs Epsom Ladies' 3s - 18th January 2017

It had seemed that since Christmas, the COWHC Ladies first team had fallen into an all too familiar Saturday morning routine...

Wake up.
1. Look out the window.
2. See snow/heavy frost.
3. Pray hockey isn't cancelled.
4. Receive notification that hockey is cancelled.
5. Walk around aimlessly, pondering what to do with the free time cancelled hockey has given you.

However this week did not follow that same routine, and once the mighty COWs had recovered from the shock of seeing no snow or frost outside their bedroom windows, the realisation set in that we might actually be able to play some hockey!

The opposition was Epsom who we had narrowly beaten 1-0 early on in the season. The game had been a hard fought battle with Epsom dominating for large periods of the game. We therefore had no doubt that our opposition would come out hard, looking to overturn what some would deem an unfair result in our previous encounter.

Strangely, this wasn't really the case with a quiet first few minutes by both sides. The pitch was incredibly slow and Croydon struggled to get to grips with it for the majority of the first half. Epsom took advantage of this, intercepting passes and producing some good counter-attacking play. Luckily Mrs B and the defence were always on hand to keep Epsom out. Despite this we did have some good attacking chances of our own, winning multiple short corners and forcing good saves from the Epsom goalie.

When the half time whistle blew, there was nothing to separate the two sides. We were right in the middle of an intense and inspirational half time talk by Nicky when, all of sudden, Chloe spotted a pirate on the sideline. Turns out, it wasn't actually a pirate, just old coach Pirate, here to support our opposition.

The second half proved to be much more eventful. An effective half time talk meant we were able to utilise space and pass the ball better, getting ourselves into good one on one attacking positions. Unfortunately Epsom had their very own version of Lena who calmly thwarted any attempt to get past.

The longer the game remained goalless, the more our frustration grew. Both sides ramped up the intensity, and Epsom nearly got a breakthrough, only being denied by a Santy special goal line save.

Other highlights of the second half include....

Lena injuring her ankle and bravely soldiering on.
Nicky getting a ball on the nose and bravely soldiering on.
Rachel rugby tackling the oppo, getting a green card, throwing a strop and ultimately getting a yellow card.

The game ended 0-0, a fair result for a very even game. Thank yous must go to Adam for umpiring and Cath (sorry I mean DICKO) for joining our defensive line this week.

The team was: Mrs B, Lena, Chloe, Santy, Cath, Emma, LBell, Nicky, Hannah, Amelia, Sally and Rachel.

POM votes were: Sally and Lbell 0.5, Santy and Emma 1, Cath 1.5, Lena 2 and the winner was our very brave captain Nicky with 6.5 votes.

All MoM votes were (unsurprisingly) for Rachel.