Our last friendly before the league starts again was against Loughborough Town away on their water based pitch.

It took a little while for us to get to grips with the pitch and to find our feet with a few players in different positions. This led to 2 early goals for the opposition.

Once we had gotten ourselves together we started to put some excellent passages of play together. Our first goal came from Player of the Match Sophie Richardson. A long ball was put through to Charlie Fowle who managed to evade her opposite number at the top of the D. The keeper and Charlie both went for the ball with Charlie being taken out by the keeper. The ball fortuitously rolled underneath the keeper and Sophie made an excellent follow up run to knock the ball in, just as it was about to cross the line, to get that attacking touch in the D we needed.

Our second goal came from a short corner. A strike at goal was saved by the keeper into the path of Emma Storey on the left hand side of the D. Emma's following shot on goal was deflected by a defender over the line. Emma's first goal of the season and the surprise on her face showed it.

Half time we were 2 all and deserved it.

However, again at the start of the second half we switched off and allowed Loughborough to win some short corners. They managed to score off of a few of these, some very accurate shots into the corners on the goal just high enough to make it difficult for the defenders on the posts.
Not deserving to be this far behind, Kettering still pushed forward, but tiredness was setting in as our 12 man side worked their socks off. Some great performances by our forwards and wide players kept us moving forward when we could. Our defenders, although a new set of 4 players, worked well together and tirelessly closed down any attacking opportunity by Loughborough as the time ticked away in the second half.

We go into next week feeling positive that although our friendly's haven't given us the results we wanted, our performance has been enough to beat most teams in our league.