Ladies 4's first cup game of the season.

The Ladies 4’s had their first cup game of the season on Sunday 16th Sept. We were drawn to play against Grange Ladies 3’s, who are in the league above us - East District Premier league. Although feeling slightly apprehensive about this, we were all keen to give it our best shot and play a solid game, as well as benefit from some match practice without it affecting how we get on in our league.
The morning before the game, I got caught in rain during a 2-minute walk to Tesco and got soaked. Seemingly, not the best conditions to be playing hockey in. However, we were lucky having been assigned a 3:30pm pb as the afternoon did brighten up and we were fortunate to have a rain free game (although a bit windy – occasionally resulting in players struggling to hear the umpires whistle).
Although we had 14 players on the day, unfortunately neither of our goalies, Katie and Saskia, were able to play. As such, Catie - our captain – kindly offered to step in as goalie for the match. In contrast, Grange ladies 3’s had two fully kitted goalies sitting on their bench.
The match started and we were off. For the first 10 minutes or so, I guess both teams were trying to get used to how the other team played. Both teams were keeping possession and making good passes, although Grange 3’s did seem to hold their press high on us, but they were frequently pushed back with Jenny and Judith’s strong hit outs. We held our own for about 15 mins or so until unfortunately, their forwards off-set our defence and scored the first goal of the match. About 10 mins later, they were given a short corner and scored a fast and accurate shot on goal. 2-0.
About 5 mins later, we were given a short corner. Neve’s accurate inject was stopped by Alida who hit from the top of the D – a perfect strike which smacked off the back-board. Goal! And 2-1 going in to half time.
During the second half, both teams put the pressure on each other. Rowan made lots of strong passes in mid-field up to Liv, Michelle, Imogen, all trying to make space in the ‘D’ and take shots at the goal. Julia and Ashley both seemed to be able to be everywhere, all the time. Neve made some super-fast reverse stick crosses passing metres in front of the goal and keeping the grange defenders on their toes. Unfortunately, Grange also had some great breaks, resulting in Jodie, Lauren, Rozy trying to break down their forwards flow by tackling and limiting their options. Although Catie made many excellent saves, a couple of their shots resulted in goals. One of which, however, Catie managed to triple save before it was sneaked in the back of the net. Julia says she heard a Grange player exclaim ‘Wow that was really good goal-keeping!’ – not bad supposing this was Catie’s first time in nets in a couple of years (and has only been a keeper a couple of times before).
The final whistle blew and the match was over – with the final score being 5-1 to Grange. However, the score had stayed at 3-1 for a while and I’d say (probs biasedly) that the possession was fairly similar, so despite the score we came away from the game happy about how we had played.
Thank you Iain McGillivray for umpiring. Player of the match was Catie.