gU13 16-Feb-08: Deans Sports 9-1 Oswald Rd (HT 3-1)

Awaiting match report.

Katie

Shaye and Becky were on holiday for this 2008 rematch against Deans so we only had 8 players but after another good training session on Thursday, we were confident that we wouldn’t fall apart as we had in our first match of 2008. In fact we had another best ever match for the season! Since our no.1 was gallivanting away on holiday, we put Katie in goal. Rudi took Shaye’s position at left back instead of in the middle with Ruqayyah and Tara performing the other main defensive duties.

We started really well, stopped Dean’s first couple of attacks and passed the ball around brilliant from the back to the front. Tara blocked one attack but Deans got the ball back with some good aggressive midfield play. Then Ruqayyah intercepted a Deans pass and, moving forward quickly, she looked up and saw Kenesha out wide – she passed the ball to Kenesha who took off like a rocket but quickly came up against the Deans defence and she put a great through ball to Zoe who ran onto the ball and slotted it past the Deans goalie! We were in the lead! Our first ever lead in the season! Deans were energised – remember they had a full team and we only had 8 players – and came at us hard but, unlike earlier in the year, we were not cowed and fought back just as fiercely. We held off attack after attack and even launched some more attacks but their defence swarmed around Roisin and Zoe, preventing them from scoring another. Finally Deans broke through our defence with a swift passing move that ended in a cross to an unmarked player who scored in the 15^th minute. At the end of a very hard fought half, Deans had scored twice more but our defence had played extremely well and we had given them several more scares with our midfield and forward play.

In the second half we started tiring but still played well – Deans managed to stop us scoring and they scored their goals in two flurries, one in the middle of the half and one near the end of the match. They had started using their extra player to good effect, overloading our defenders with quick attacks but we still carried on playing well and didn’t lose our heads. We made them fight for every goal. Well done Ozzie Girls!

Kamal

Goals: Zoë(Kenesha) 5’
Opposition’s Player of the Match: Zoë-Lea Dale
Managers’ Player of the Match: Roisin Blythin-Hammond
Team: (fwd) Roisin, Zoë (mid) Tara, Ruqayyah, Kenesha (def) Rudi, Sophie, (gk) Katie(c)

gU13 05-Jan-08: Deans Sports 19-0 Oswald Rd (HT 7-0)

Awaiting match report.

Rebecca

The first match after the Christmas/New Year break was quite disappointing for the team – it was the first game for a while in which they played worse then their previous games. In fact, the team played as badly as at the beginning of the season – when most of then were total beginners! It was like most of them were half asleep. Sophie was definitely very tired as she had just come from a sleepover at Kenesha’s – who was also motoring around in circles at only half her usual pace. We weren’t helped by having an inexperienced referee who gave 3 penalties against us – 2 in the first half – for girls protecting themselves from the ball (though it would be nice if the players actively blocked or headed these balls away instead of shrieking and putting their hands in front of their faces or chests).

Anyway in the first half Becky played very well in goal and saved a lot of shots though she couldn’t do anything about the well-taken penalties or the goals where all our players watched the attackers line up their shots without putting them under pressure. Roisin had a few runs and Shaye and Tara also played reasonably well. Ruqayyah had another good match but without Katie, she had few outlets for her passes as both Zoe and Kenesha couldn’t get away from their markers for long. We had three chances but couldn’t put any away.

In the second half we gave Rudi a chance in goal and she did extremely well – amazing really for her first stint between the posts. Not only did she make some good saves, she also distributed the ball around extremely well. (She just needs to learn not to trust defenders). The team gave goals away steadily throughout the half and, though we made a couple of chances, we didn’t score any goals ourselves. Sigh.

Kamal

Goals: nowt
Opposition’s Player of the Match: Kenesha Bagi
Managers’ Player of the Match: Rudi Blake
Team: (fwd) Zoë, Kenesha (mid) Roisin, Tara, Rudi/Rebecca, (def) Shaye, Ruqayyah(c), Sophie, (gk) Rebecca/Rudi

gU13 01-Dec-07: Oswald Rd 1-12 Deans Sports (HT 1-4)

Awaiting match report.

Tara

Once again, we were looking forward to our first game with a full team… and then reality gave us a series of cruel blows – Sophie was away at her brother’s party or something, Rudi was staying with relatives and Zoe was swimming at the club championships (won 5 trophies, well done Zoe J). So we were down to 7 players. Then during the warm up, someone used Roisin for target practice and she twisted her knee trying to dodge the ball so she was off for the first half, and we were down to six! Aaaaaaarrrrggghh!!

However, only having six in the first half really seemed to concentrate the players’ minds and they played extremely well, always backing up each other and passing the ball around well. In the first fifteen minutes, Deans got through three times through localised overloading of our defence. Then followed a period when we played unbelievably well, stopping all Deans’ attacks and even putting together a few of our own with just our six and Katie’s good goal kicks – we had a few attacks but just the lack of a killer shot stopped us from scoring. After fifteen minutes of this, Kenesha got onto the ball down the left and ran down the wing (about the third time she’d done this) fighting past their defenders, Becky made a good run into the centre and Kenesha managed to get in an excellent cross to Becky but before Becky got to the ball, a Deans defender stretched for the ball and knocked it past her own goalkeeper! We gave the goal to Kenesha as it was her shot that caused the mistake. Deans were a little upset at letting in a goal against 6 players and attacked all out for the last five minutes of the game, managing to get a goal in the last minute of the game.

In the second half we switched Katie out of goal into midfield and put Becky into goal. Roisin was still a little shaky on her legs but wanted to play so we were back to 7 players (against 9) and we had, in theory, a stronger midfield (and weaker attack). We should have done even better but Deans obviously had a good half time talk and came out passing the ball out much more to take better advantage of their numerical superiority and we relaxed a little too much and tried to attack instead of playing it steady in midfield and taking our chances when we got them. So we left the defenders much more exposed even though Ruqayyah ran like a daemon blocking, tackling and clearing. Shaye and Tara were left too often facing two or three attackers as our midfield tired and came back slower and slower from attack. In the end we were too tired to stop every attack and though Becky saved a lot of shots and got more 1-on-1 practice (sorry Becks), she couldn’t stop them all.

An encouraging game just for the coolness we showed under pressure and the passing game we displayed for a short while. We just need to do it more often and for longer.

Kamal

Goals: Kenesha(Ruqayyah) 30’
Opposition’s Player of the Match: Ruqayyah Hashmi
Managers’ Player of the Match: Tara Chrystal
Team: (fwd) nowt (mid) Kenesha, Rebecca(c), Roisin, (def) Shaye, Ruqayyah, Tara, (gk) Katie

gU13 06-Oct-07: Oswald Rd 0-17 Deans Sports (HT 0-8)

The team had their heads held high at the beginning of the game thinking it was an easy win. Ever believed in jinxes? Our defenders, Sophie, Shaye, and me were indestructible. Midfielders, Katie, Zoe and Kenesha were busy changing their batteries and the striker, Tara, was raring to go. Anyway. The team started brilliantly. Often playing past player after player but some people made an ant into an elephant and went too far. Rest assured they are not blamed. Some minutes past the start one of their players snuck past our wall of defenders and booted in a lucky shot. I'm sad to say our Becky isn't bat fink so her wings of steel let her down this time. Not that we cared. It was only one goal. We kept saying we would shoot double the score back. We carried on playing and time after time we choked. But that was ok to us. 5-0 didn't matter. 7-0 didn't matter and we were still going. Our heads were still held high. It wasn't near as bad as the last match. Soon enough the whistle blew for half time and we came off he pitch.

It wasn't 5.1 minutes later that we were called back onto the pitch. We walked onto another half full of football. This half was worse then the last but that didn't mean we were sulking. We played on brilliantly until the last minute managing a goal or 2 in it. Soon the time came when the whistle was blown again and we came off the pitch having lost by 15+ goals. Yet our heads were still held high. We didn't really care. We just went back to eating sweets and getting on with our lives. Some teams may take a loss like that as if a train had killed their little dog Jimmy but not us…

By Ruqayyah Hashmi

Another improvement in the team – the defence was much better with Shaye getting goal-side of the attackers and blocking quite a few shots and Sophie sticking to her task, especially with their very tricky no.4 – quite a few times, she kept goal side and forced the attacker wide so that she couldn’t get shots in. Even when the no.4 dribbled past her, Sophie tracked back, got goal-side and made it very hard for the attackers. Ruqayyah went back into defence a lot and made lots of very good clearances; and her free kicks are quite good now – getting good height and distance on them. Tara made a few runs, taking her markers with her, and leaving Zoe free a couple of times but unfortunately their no.11 was very fast and managed to get back in time to muscle Zoe off the ball – otherwise we’d definitely have got a couple of goals in the second half. Kenesha played her usual midfield role buzzing about again however we’re always going to find it very hard to achieve a good passing game when we’re a player down! Not unless we all play like a mixture of Cristiano Ronaldo dos Santos Aviero, Ryan Giggs and Roy Keane! Katie did try and play like a mini-Roy but she got knackered and went into goal again midway through the second half. Our ball skills are getting much better (though we could always kick and pass better – even professional players practise kicking and passing the ball), so now the main things we need to improve next are our speed and fitness.

Kamal

Goals: nowt
Opposition’s Player of the Match: Katie Shaw
Managers’ Player of the Match: Sophie Pointon
Team: (fwd) Tara(c), (mid) Kenesha, Ruqayyah, Zoe, (def) Shaye, Katie, Sophie, (gk) Rebecca