COWHC Ladies 1s vs Barnes Ladies 3s - 13th Jan 2018

It was an early start for the ladies 1s this week with a trek over to Barnes for a brisk 10am start. Nicky W, who was feeling especially generous, gave us an extra half hour in bed by moving our meet time to 9.30am with strict instructions to arrive FULLY kitted up. This clearly wasn’t enough of a lie in for our faithful leader though who found she couldn’t quite fathom her alarm clock and required a personal wake up call by the coach when he arrived to pick her up. Now you’d have thought that was enough to get her dick of the day but alas, she was spared.

Arriving at the quagmire that is Barnes’ “pitch” we hastily took to our warm up. With a number of us questioning our vaccination history and querying what safeguards we could take against contracting legionaries from the skanky Thames water that Barnes had clearly sprayed all over the pitch, we began our shuttles. After a few haphazard slaps from yours truly, the Charolais Cows so beautifully embellished on to our shiny white shirts quickly turned in to Holsteins. Now some would argue that people would pay good money for that kind of artistic dappling effect emulating that amongst the dairy cow range, but these ladies are hard to please.

After a few quick trips to use the high class, pitch side portaloo facilities, followed by a frantic rush to find the hand sanitiser packed by those sensible members of our team, we got going. Now for those members of the squad who may have been a little sleep deprived, and contrary to vicious rumours were not hungover, the events of the game are a little hazy. This could be explained by the fact that the game was fast paced with pressure being laid on hard by both teams. Or quite possibly that the mighty cows were quickly out of breath from keeping their mouths firmly shut to avoid catching any waterborne diseases from the swamp that was the pitch. Either way, Barnes were hungry for it and with a stilted start from the Cows it looked like they were going to dominate the game.

After the initial 5 minutes snooze we woke up and pressed hard winning some penalty corners. Confident this would go our way given the much improved performance that the whole ladies section has been enjoying from penalty corners this season, we selected our routines. Unfortunately our luck was not in and we could not convert. Instead, some of the Cows decided to use these opportunities to make some spectacular attempts to win the illustrious muff of the match prize and the widely sought after honour of writing the match report. Sadly, for Bryony with her a golf style swing and miss, and for Alex and Nicky W deciding to find their generosity and both leave the ball to the other at the top of the D, the prize eluded them.

In the second half we had another nap with left us trailing 1-0. It was at this point we remembered who we are and where we’ve come from and in true Croydon style stuck in a load of “crunching” tackles with Tani finally finding the back of the net. After a lot more battling from both sides the score line ended in a 1-1 draw with the point leaving us a solid mid-table.

From there is was on to the ladies 1s Christmas party and a hilarious evening hosted by Alex. With some shocking revelations about the off-pitch antics of the more senior members of the team, new hockey rules being created and an excellent game of consequences which widely featured Donald Trump we ended the day in true ladies Cows style!

Thanks to Rochie for coming along to coach and to DP for umpiring.

Team - Lisa P, Santy, Lena, Dicko, Lbell, Becca, Alex, Nicky W, Bryony, Lydia, Hannah, Rachel & Tani

PoM - Lena, well deserved for some spectacular tackles

MoM - Lydia, questionable voting and for being tired