A tale of two halves for Hawks L3s against Oxford L3s
20 October 2018, 11:00, Banbury Road North (Top)
Ladies' 3s 4 - 2 Oxford Ladies 3s
9.30am: After an initially distressing shortage of milk in my house I was forced to buy some breakfast en route. The rightly named most important meal of the day was then enjoyed in the changing rooms to the soundtrack of Rosie encouraging us all to get in the Dirty Zone*.
9.47am: A misty morning that transformed itself into a beautiful afternoon. I don’t want to blow my own trumpet here, but I looked at this mist and said, ‘if this mist disappeared it would be a really nice day’. Spoiler: the mist disappeared, and it was a really nice day.
10.01am: Crowds out in their hundreds (tens).
10.05am: Ladies 3s are pumped from inspiring talk of dirty zone.
10.08am: Ladies 3s panic.
10.09am: Ladies 3s let a goal in.
10.17am: Megan takes vengeance in form of beautifully executed short corner.
10.18am: Ladies 3s inspired. Some more hockey is played.
10.35am: 1-1 at half-time. The game really is all to play for. For those interested, at this point I had a really excellent satsuma reminding me that one of the great things about this time of year is the increased flavour borne by citrus.
10.37: Team talk from side-line manager Tom G further inspires. Ladies 3s decide we had played ok in the first half and we make a group decision to also play well in the second half.
10.40 – 11.15**: In a shock turn of events we actually mostly managed to act upon this group decision and scored 3 (!!!) goals in the second half. Excellent passages of play linked to Victoria who was spending a lot of time in the aforementioned Dirty Zone, showing exemplary incorporation of training drills into an actual match. More Dirty Zone action from Olah takes the score to 4-1, leaving the Ladies 3s triumphant as the final whistle blows.
Thanks go to Jim P the umpire for his parting words and apt summary “You deserved to win but you didn’t half make a meal of it”
MOM: Becca C
DOD: Alex G
* Often referred to incorrectly as the ‘Ugly Zone’
** Unable to provide accurate timings for this section of play, so distracted was I by the glory of winning
