The South ladies 1s turned out on a sunny morning at the Leys to play old enemies Newmarket 2s. Animosity clouded the warm-up with Alice and Tash locked in a bitter battle for the title of Goal Queen. Ellie lost the toss meaning South started on the back foot as Newmarket went out strong and forced a scrabbling defence to wake up quickly as the home goal was threatened. This set the stage for what was, frankly, a lazy and complacent performance from the South defenders, with keeper Loopy barely moving a muscle to help the team all match.

Continuing the theme for this season, South started slowly, keeping the ball away from the opposition but goals were slow to follow. Lazy midfield play meant the forwards had to do all the work on goal and meant a mere 4 were scored in the first half. Despite her teammates helping out by getting in some pre-emptive blows, Georgie wimped out of finishing her 'debate' over the rules of obstruction with the substantial Newmarket central defender. We forgave her a when she scored at last off a short corner, but hope for more moral fortitude in future.

In the second half, the dominant feature of the game was astoundingly selfish play from Kendra who stole ball after ball and landed them in the back of net in a determined effort to thwart Alice's quest for the goal crown. Convenient (suspiciously so: should we be examining for corruption?) for Tash, who was able to appear laid back about her own title hunt and landed a mere 4 goals. Alice seemed somewhat upset about the success of Kendra's haunting of the goal line, but senior voices in the team were heard to comment that if she'd followed instructions to stay high, she'd have had more than a modest 3 extra on her tally.

So, work to be done all around and South will need to pull their socks up to win more convincingly than 14-0 next week. The Man of the Match award was grudgingly awarded to Kendra and the Lemon of the Match award goes to John Benedikz who 'kindly' came along to referee then lost count, almost certainly diddling us out of a potentially crucial 15th goal.