14/10/18 Abbey Rangers v Headington Ladies

Headington Ladies FC
Oct 14, 2018
3 min read

Abbey Rangers Ladies v Headington Ladies, Thames Valley Counties Women’s Football League Division 1, Sunday 14th October 2018, Kick Off 2pm, Addlestone Moor

Team: Hillier (gk), Anna, Sarah, Freya (c), Jemma, Kat, Snowy, Emma, CD, Mary, Andreea, Nicöla, Gemma, Danielle and Naomi.

Score 6 – 1 (Mary)

Manager: Marc

Thanks to Philip for running the line for us today!!

We all met up on time at a very wet OX4, no one was late…no sire no one at all! We made our way to Surrey in heavy rain and arrived hoping it wouldn’t be raining…but it was raining!! The facilities there are superb, lovely club house and we got to go out on the main pitch through the tunnel, very exciting!!! Well, I was excited anyway, might just have been me then.

The match kicked off and they came at us with everything they had, we were a bit wobbly but were trying. Sadly disaster struck after about 10 minutes when a ball over the top saw their pacy striker sprint clear of the defence to plant the ball past Hillier. We tried to get back into the match but disaster struck again after 15 minutes when the AR left winger got into the area and crossed for their striker to score from close range. We made a few changes and tried to get ourselves into the game. We started playing some nice football and were looking solid. Sadly we fell asleep, a high ball was challenged by two of our players, they both then backed off challenging for the second ball which was won by an AR player, she played it forward to a striker who flicked a foot at the ball, the ball could’ve gone anywhere but such is our luck it flew straight to their other pacy striker who sprinted clear and planted a fabulous shot into the top left hand corner. We had played about 30 minutes when we started to take the game by the scruff of the neck, we pushed AR into their own half as we searched for our first goal. We were playing some really nice football and were rewarded for our improved efforts with a cracking goal for Mary!! So 3-1 down at the break and we’d given ourselves a lifeline!!

We started the second half in the same form that we ended the first half, we were really asking questions of the AR defence and were looking the more likely to score. Some of the football being played was joyous, sadly we didn’t make our dominance count and as the half wore on we lost our way a little bit. The rain had become heavier and the wind had picked up and we were playing into a strong headwind, where was this in the first half? Mother Nature has some serious questions to answer!! We conceded a fourth goal after about 70 minutes and conceded again from an identical move minutes later. Anyway we soldiered on trying to reduce the arrears. We got caught out in the 85th minute when we were caught on the counter attack, we had all but three defenders ahead of the ball and as they broke they had four attackers who played the ball from one side of the pitch to the other taking out our defenders one at a time before scoring at the far post. The game soon ended with no further goals being scored. Despite the score-line for 45 minutes we played some superb football, it was just a shame that mistakes in the other 45 minutes cost us dearly.

We introduced the sash for the new player of the match award which was jointly won by Freya and Danielle!! Danielle had done a bunk so Freya had the honour of wearing the sash for the first time!!