Our first official away game in this new league and Barry was not wrong about the pitch; our bag of balls certainly felt a bit lighter after our warm up!

From first impressions it appeared that St Ives had quite an experienced team and so with speed in our team we felt we had the upper hand from the start. But throughout the first half we all felt as if we were playing in a bit of a haze. Despite having all the pressure we struggled to find the continuation of passes and struggled to read each other’s movements. Steph almost nearly made the opposition pay for a stray pass across the back as she chased the ball down only to have it kicked up into her thigh, and not reaping any reward for her efforts or bruises!
We managed to work through our penalty corner routines about 3 times today and almost came close to scoring as Emma’s strike pinged off the post. Our goal did finally come from open play as Evie picked up the ball in the circle and managed to lift the ball enough to bobble over two players sticks to fall to Emma whose air shot proved a great dummy for Steph who then nicked it in on the far post. Not the prettiest of goals but a goals a goal as they say!!
As half time came the general feeling across the team was frustration as we had dropped our own level and were letting things out of our control get to us. Some stern words and some encouragement at half time saw us start the second half a lot more positive.
Taking Barry’s previous advice Toni received the push back and thumped it down to the left corner (this ball was lost so we then needed a replacement), but then it was all about pressure and squeezing them in. It worked! Amy said that from the back we always looked like we were playing in a quarter of the pitch and Ilana as today’s player of the match worked tirelessly to make the interceptions and drive the ball forwards. More penalty corners came and went although Emma’s 3rd opportunity to get a goal was denied by a foot on the line only which resulted in another penalty corner rather than a stroke, which then also went astray.
Anyway, as the game continued it didn’t look like the second goal wasnt going to come despite everyone’s efforts but a 1-0 win is still a win at the end of the day, and with a lot of new faces in the team we actually played very well as a unit. The highlight of the game came at the end when Amy informed us all that she had not touched the ball once which was credit to the team in front of her. A special mention also goes to Gracie who received DotD votes for seeming to get tripped up by a ghost on pitch!
A frustrating game in that we should have scored so many more goals but we got the win and once again the positives certainly outweigh the negatives ten-fold.