Ladies' 7s only manage to draw with Abingdon Pilgrims

We began inauspiciously.  Yasmin had been hit in the face in the warm-up but was able to come on again after 10 minutes.  We started slowly but under pressure from Abingdon we got our act together and began to dominate the game.  There were some lovely passing moves in the midfield from Solveig to Lottie and on to Rosie.  The forwards created lots of opportunities but never managed to score.  The ball kept missing the post by inches.  When they did break through, Abingdon were quite dangerous, but Iona did some great saves to keep us at 0-0 at half time.

In the second half we continued to dominate the game, but their defence was solid.  We even had one ball bounce off the inside of the goalpost back into play.  There was lots of excellent play with everyone working hard at making good passes to those posting up.  Helen Hambling, in her first game for us from Back to Hockey, had a really good game. But despite our pressure we did not manage to score, much to Abingdon’s relief.  So, they are still second in the league and we are third.  We are still in the zone for possible promotion, so it is all to play for between now and Easter.

Many people were nominated for player of the match.  It became a tie between Bella and Kate.  Both had excellent games and worked extremely hard to be up and back.  As fantasy league is running, we had to have only one player of the match.  Deborah cast her deciding vote for Kate which Bella heartily applauded.