Big win for wonderful Whites

Report by Derek Brien, Team Manager
3pm at Meggetland and the signs were not good. We had ten players standing there (including goalie) and I was expecting 13. I’d had an e-mail earlier in the week with one player withdrawing through illness and another one this morning for the same reason. A quick text plea this morning procured Ellen Robertson’s sister Morven in an effort to give me a couple of options for subs. Another very last minute call-off by e-mail and I had visions of us having to play the game one ‘man’ down! A huge sigh of relief was breathed when it transpired that two players were up the road at Tipperlinn (I won’t name names.....) and so we were soon up to 12. Still not ideal, but we had enough for a team.

Warm up done and positions agreed, the game started and the first ten minutes were very encouraging as the girls passed it around well and probed for an opening in Cala’s ‘D’. Some great work down the left by Lucy Topley saw the ball passed inside to Ellen, who in turn fed Yazi, with the ball then ending up on the stick of Anna Morrison, playing as a forward for the first time, and she calmly slotted the ball past the advancing Cala goalkeeper. The fans went wild! Cala 0 - 1 Whites.

As expected, Cala came straight back at us in an effort to find an equaliser, but our defence of Anna Simpson, Abbie Fairbairn, Ruth Shekleton, and Kirstin Anderson (with sub Alice Grove switching in too), kept it tight, ably directed by goalie Emma at the back who was close to losing her voice after playing four games this weekend. We defended a couple of short corners and then Lucy, Ellen and Morven switched it up and flashed the ball across the goal. Yazi, who chased everything down all afternoon, ran to stop the ball going out of play and squared to Ellie Hall and she smacked a beauty goal-ward which took a slight deflection by a Cala defender as it struck the backboard for our second goal. The fans went even wilder! Cala 0 - 2 Whites.

Half-time arrived and the girls came in for the obligatory sweets and team-talk. I told the girls that they were playing superbly and to try and keep the pressure on for the next half hour. Kirstin identified that the defence were moving up and down the pitch in a line and we were susceptible to conceding on the break so she and Abbie took it in turns to either move up with play or sit deep to deal with any long balls. Ellen, Lucy and Ellie were running the midfield and I asked them to just keep doing what they were doing. Yazi, Morven and Anna were asked to just keep sniping away to unsettle the Cala defence and not to give them any time to settle on the ball. I must have aged ten years willing the next half hour to run down. The girls were superb. We defended three short corners very well, with no real threat on our goal. The only incident of note was when Emma attempted to clear a loose ball and kicked it against poor Kirstin! Thankfully she was able to dust herself down and carry on.

At long last, the final whistle blew and we could relax. A 2-0 win against top-of-the-table Cala! Got to be happy with that!
Thanks to Anne Anderson for assisting me today and to Rozy for umpiring.

A HUGE well done to the girls for chasing everything, creating opportunities, scoring a couple of really good team goals and for keeping it tight at the back. It’s fantastic to see the progress they’ve made since the start of the season and I’m hoping that we can carry that form into our last game.

Could genuinely have gone to any one of the 12, but the nod for Player of the Match today went to Lucy Topley.