Sunday 13th October:
The girls arrived at CLC nice and early on Sunday morning to play Cheltenham. With it being a particularly cold morning we focused on a thorough warm up followed by sprints and a shooting drill to get the girls warm!
However, as expected, Cheltenham turned up well drilled and hungry for the ball which meant we conceded a goal shortly after the first push back! We remained a little quiet to begin with which they capitalised on by pulling our defence apart and finding a foot in the D which led to them being awarded a short corner. Despite practicing our defensive runs in training last week, Cheltenham knew exactly what they were doing and placed the ball in the goal again (annoyingly good I will add, they deserved to score ).
However, after a thorough team chat at half time, we entered the second half a brand new team. Everyone was communicating and moving on and off the ball in an attempt to create opportunities. This half we had most of the possession with a number of breaks into the attacking D to include winning a handful of short corners but, frustratingly, we just couldn’t find the back of the goal. After the third quarter break we discussed how we needed to reduce our turnovers to further maintain possession and utilise our transfers more to really challenge the Cheltenham defence. For the last 17 minutes Cheltenham were rattled – coaches were shouting and their defence were flapping. We had attack after attack after attack with some great leads from Eva and Ellie T supported by the midfield line. Finally, with 30 seconds left of play and a great run from Ellie T, the ball found the net! Extremely well deserved claw back from the Lions!
Final score 2-1 to Cheltenham. A real shame we couldn’t get the equaliser as we gave them a really strong game in the second half and I think we deserved it. However, I was really proud of everyone for fighting to the final whistle and I’m very excited for what’s to come with this team for the rest of the season
