Round 6 - Womens Premier League Cyclones vs Urunga Raiders

Northern Storm Logo Northern Storm Football Club Match Report
Northern Storm Team Womens Premier League Cyclones
Date & Venue 14/5 Korora
Opposition Urunga Raiders
Coach / Manager Mike Lloyd
Player of the Match (optional) Avalon Donovan
Score 3-5
Match Report:

With only 7 or 8 totally fresh players our fitness was again going to be tested against a Urunga side with a strong running midfield. The key for us was to shut down their stronger players in this area. We began like a house on fire, with some brilliant passing work leading to a good early goal for Jaqui. The next 15 minutes were even, with our girls having a slight advantage.

However we started to lose our shape in midfield, with Urunga’s 4-3-3 causing problems due to our lack of fitness and injuries. Soon enough we let Urunga back in with some loose defending in midfield. Things were not helped when Brontie was forced to leave the field with an ankle problem, and soon enough we let them in again to go to 2-1 down. Then right on half time Urunga got another from a corner, when we were again a little flat in defence.

At 3-1 down we were still well in the game, if we could get back to our game plan. A few positional changes started to give us some more control in midfield, as Tilly, Tash and Sarah worked really hard to stay on top of the more dangerous Urunga players. Unfortunately fatigue was again our enemy and it only needed a couple of split second errors to allow 2 more goals.

Down 5-1 and we could easily have given up, but we instead pressed hard in attack and this started to pay dividends. We pegged one back after some nice footwork from Aimee Longley, Jaqui finished off. Then another from Jaqui to get us to 5-3, followed by a couple of near misses.

Not a bad performance but we are really struggling to field 11 fit players to start a game and play for the whole 90 minutes. Some real positives: The improvement in our back 4 – although we let in 5 goals our defending was organized and our clearances improved. Avalon had an awesome game at right back. Also we will be looking at the option of playing a 2nd striker in future as Jaqui had a great game up front.