A bad day at the office

It rained and it poured on Saturday afternoon as the Ladies 2s met at Reigate School ahead of their third league game of the season. We were feeling confident after a good performance last week that ended in a 1-1 draw with Wanderers but all agreed we had played well and just needed to convert the opportunities in the D. We knew Old Georgians were at the top of the league but it's so early in the season that anything could happen.

The Mens 3s were on before us and winning 2-0, which gave us a boost to go out strongly. The sun started shining and we started well with the game pretty evenly matched although OGs were making more of their chances.

They won a few short corners and Priory defended these well until Jen took a strike straight to the foot. She hobbled off and that was the start of a number of injuries on the pitch caused by an aggressive oppo that really wanted it. We were letting ourselves down by not making the effort to meet the ball, getting to 50:50s first and getting in front of our players. Basically we just needed to want it more and by half time the score was 2-0 to OGs.

The second half was not so great. We had lost two of our subs and were down to 12 meaning there weren't fresh legs in abundance. Our heads started to go down and we stopped playing our game. We were hitting and hoping and passing off without looking up to find a player. OGs closed us down and ran the balls in time and again. There was also quite a lot of argie barge - sticks to throats, lots of hits to ankles, a flick, a bully-off and plenty of 'chat' from the oppo but we kept at it. We fought on until the last but the final tally was 6-0.

Positives to take away were: Centre-mid stood firm, our front line did well when they got the ball but we weren't feeding it up to them a lot of the time, defence worked tirelessly, mids came back to help and there was great team spirit. We have got a lot to play for this season and, although we have had a tough start, we have all the ingredients to bed-in well in Div 3.

Jess, oui c'est moi, was man of the match - probably because most of the game was in our 23 in the second half so not many other people got to touch the ball sadly!!!