'Let's Knock Swindon Off!'

We knew coming into this match that we needed to pick ourselves up after the loss last weekend, and it helped that Swindon tweeted earlier in the week that the Swindon 2s were undefeated, so we set ourselves the challenge to “knock Swindon off” as Verity put it.

Swindon started off strongly, immediately putting the ball into our D, and having their first strike on goal, but we didn’t let that faze us and we were almost immediately having our first attempt. Then came a moment that Verity surely would not want mentioning. Due to a defending mistake, we were awarded with a penalty flick which Verity stepped up to take. Unfortunately she chose the right side to go for but hit the post. And after making a noise resembling a bear Verity was more fired up than ever! After dominating for the first 10 minutes we finally got a long awaited goal, which came from a storming strike from Freya across the circle. But just scoring once wasn’t enough for her, as 5 minutes later Freya was back dodging their defence to entertain us with another goal. 15 minutes in and we were 2-0 up.

Then came a period of endless attempts from us, but nothing coming from them. But due to a fast counter attack from Swindon at halftime the score was 2-1.

The second half began very promising with Jaime scoring from close and central. We continued to attack and attack, with Swindon only getting through on counter attacks that didn’t come to anything due to some brilliant saves from Edie. A few more minutes passed by, and after a hard pass across the circle Fiona used her reverse stick to hit the ball against the back board. 4-1.

Swindon were awarded a short corner when down in our circle, . They pushed it out, and pushed it towards the goal. It felt like slow motion as the ball somehow managed to bobble into the goal. 4-2, and Swindon were now all fired up. A couple of minutes later were back outside our circle, where they struck towards the goal. Sophie managed to get a stick to the ball when it spun up in the air off her stick and back into the goal. The umpires needed to deliberate whether it was a goal or not, and eventually it was given as not a goal.

With 2 minutes remaining Freya wanted her hat-trick, which she duly achieved in style. Another fierce strike across the circle between the goalies legs and the score was 5-2, and the final whistle went.

Player of the match was a difficult decision for all of us, but it was Kitty that won, due to her running and great play during the match.