July 6th 2014 vs West Ham AFC Women’s B
Who’s that strange man on the field?
As a Goalie of a Team that dominated most of the game, that was the highlight of the game – doing star-jumps and talking to a strange old man who came and stood next to me in the goal box, my Dad. We discussed many soccer-related things that day and plotted how I could score a goal, meaning that Coach Russ would have to pay for my tickets to Europe. But the balls that made it down to the goal box were few and far between. The amazing work the Unicol attackers and mids were doing left the defence pretty much redundant as well, and they were having to find excuses to go up and help out the mids to help satisfy their craving for the ball. Eventual calls from the side line came from the West Ham supporters telling my Dad to leave the field of play to which his response was “What play? The ball hasn’t been down here at all in the last 20mins!” Mum then called sternly from the side line “Mark! Get off the field, you’re upsetting the supporters!” With his tail between his legs, Dad headed off the field and left me to do my star jumps, which didn’t last long.
The Ham West attackers managed to hoof some long balls over the half-way line and sprinted towards the goal. The awesome Unicol defenders pressured them all the way to the goal box which made for some easy saves for the Goalie. As the ball was taken back up the field, our forever ‘in-the-right-place-at-the-right-time’ attacker Megan scored 3 goals, our amazing striker Erin added another 2 awesome goals to her Golden Boot stats, Tash popped a beautiful ball into the back of the net, lovely Lou crossed a sharp goal into the corner of the goal, and Sharleen with that dangerous left foot slotted a wicked goal as well, making the fulltime score 8-0. It could have been more but luckily West Hamilton had a pregnant girl playing in defence which made our attackers a bit cautious of taking the ball anywhere near her. The goals were assisted by a mixture of set-play passes from out wide as well as crosses and well-controlled ping pong deflection passes.
Although West Ham were not lucky enough to score any goals, they played tirelessly and their Goalies who were continually under pressure never gave up the battle until the fulltime whistle was blown. Thank you for hosting us West Ham, we enjoyed playing a team who played hard but fair and the after match feed of pizzas was definitely worth the wait!
