Another week, another game against City, this time against their 4s. South as usual approached this game with a sense of optimism as well as calm, with conversation focusing on the age of the team rather than perhaps more appropriate topics of who was actually playing and where.

In any case, we started the game with eleven correctly positioned players and strolled into our usual dominant-though-slightly-casual style of play. The deadlock was broken after some good work by Kim who gave the ball to Julie, allowing her to run wide and cross into the D where Elaine, for the first time in her career, managed to sneak in front of a defender and slip the ball into the goal. 1-0.

This seemed to spark South into life and the goals continued to come with Laura “5 Goals a Game” Ludlow striking a sweetly timed reverse stick shot past the keeper. 2-0. The next goal wasn't so pretty with Laura completing what looked like a “massive stick tackle” resulting in another goal being awarded to South. 3-0.

By that point Jess was distraught about missing out on the action, such that when Laura placed a cross into the D Jess rocketed it past their terrified keeper. 4-0.

South then began to relax somewhat and stopped playing with their usual fluency, which resulted in City maintaining a spell of possession. This then led to one of the most unintentional goals ever, where a City player mis-hit the ball causing it to soar into the air and loop over a stranded Loopy!! Whilst this was hilarious, Loopy's retort of “I’m short!” was priceless and led to a well deserved Lemon of the Match award. 4-1.

Once the game restarted South began to press forward again with some nice passes through the middle by Julie and Caroline. The increase in pressure finally gave South a short corner which George “Have I Scored?” Hurford smashed in, thereby continuing her late surge towards the Goal Queen title. Another goal from Laura followed shortly after so that South ended the first half 6-1.

After a plea from Kim at half time to have more fun in the game, South still started somewhat sluggishly. Which may have been due to the length of time it took for the second half to get going, whilst we were all stood against the Arctic wind. In any case, after some great work by George and Kim in recovering possession, Laura was able to slot it through to Elaine who, with bags of space, slotted it past the keeper. 7-1. Jess then added to her tally after a square pass from Laura at the top of the D made it 8-1.

City to their credit continued to try and press and several attacks were thwarted by the South defence with some good tackling from Ellie, Anne, Julie and Caroline. This also enabled South to counter attack with Kim making some great runs through the middle, one of which resulted in Laura receiving the ball before darting into the D and smashing it past the keeper from a wide angle. 9-1. As the game began to peter out, City mounted their best attack and after some silky skills by their forwards, the South goal was breach making it 9-2. South, however, had the last throw of the dice and Jess, keen to extend her Goal Queen dominance, smashed it in from another short corner meaning the score ended 10-2.

A good all round performance from the team and a man of the match performance from Julie who made some great runs and passes.

Now onto the next game…