| Team | Ladies 4 |
| Opponent | Newent 2 |
| Date | November 30, 2024 |
| Result | Loss |
| Score | 1 – 5 |
The ladies 4s were revelling today in having an away fixture in the afternoon for a change finally, allowing some of us the time to trek over to Newent after a lie in! With a few gasps from players of “we’ve been here before” and debating if their changing rooms were worse than Brockworth’s (without the flooded toilets!), and after watching a heated mens match beforehand, we had a quick warm up before facing Newent 2s.
With my prior warnings about being full of the lurgi (it’s not covid!) and to not get too close, we managed to keep ourselves and our opposition out of our D for at least 15 minutes, whilst we played some stunning hockey. Lucie would be proud of our triangles, bananas and communication in our 3rd week of a new formation, we looked great! There was some lovely play from Darcey (who was surprised to be positioned at right back) but quickly established a rhythm up the pitch to India, Neve and Lilia who had some lovely passing play and were unlucky to miss the target.
But then Newent upped their game and we found ourselves doing a lot of defending. Caz and Katie did a fab job of stopping the quick breaks into the D, and somehow I managed to use every pad and stick (yes sorry Nick!) to keep the ball out of our goal. I even managed to find the floor finally (after a shove in the back) and stopped the ball twice on the floor, yay!
But try as we might the goal eventually came and we found ourselves 1 nil down after a pretty unlucky miss from Rach who decided to try and defend by putting herself on the floor in front of goal. With calls of “you can get up now Rach”, we dusted ourselves off and went again.
We enjoyed several (terrifying) Newent short corners with one narrowly missing Darcey’s head. Several more off the post and some defensive moments from Freya and Caz in the D were epic, but unfortunately by half time Newent had found the net twice more, leaving us 3 nil down.
With our opposition providing us some oranges and the traditional squashee half time talk from supporter Sue, we started back. Our newly refreshed outlook after half time translated into the return of our silky play from the midfield with Bethany and Tilly both controlling the game from midfield to set some great passes up the field to Georgie and India which finally saw our efforts rewarded with what can only be described as “cracking” from an India strike!
With excitement in the air of “we’re winning the second half” and Caz being super impressed that India hadn’t fallen over yet, India fell over and we conceded again, boo!
But try as they might, we kept many more goals at bay, and I still have no idea how I made a 3 rebound save between sneezes and bagged player of the match today!
A final short corner from Newent after Rach (led on the floor) and kicked the ball in front of the umpire leading to a final Newent short corner where we unluckily conceded again after a lovely bounce of the post from Laura’s pad and one rebound too many.
Final score 5-1 loss, POTM: Laura 🤕, Lionie: Tilly.
Special mention to captain Rach who literally was everywhere today and has a bruise on each knee and thigh to prove it!