Happy Halloween and Happy Birthday Laurie!

We arrived at Newmarket in good time with spirits high, thanks to last weekend's 6-0 win against City and the gorgeous sunny weather. The first half was quite tense with a number of chances for both teams and some great movement off the ball by Iona, Naomi and Cath, and some excellent breaks by Abby, Esme and Grace up the pitch. Unfortunately, we didn't manage to convert those chances into a goal.

The second half, we were facing into the sun which made things more difficult and the nice sunny weather we had appreciated before was beginning to feel way too hot and not helping our tired legs and lungs. Newmarket came back hard straight after the whistle and after an unfortunate tackle in the D we gave away a short. Despite the best efforts of Lucy, Valerie, Louisa, Emma and myself, a well-aimed strike put Newmarket 1-0 up.

South's spirits didn't dip though and everyone played brilliantly right until the end, with a couple of very close shots by Lauren and Eimear just brushing the post. Stella defence from Valerie, Louisa and Lucy kept the score at 1-0.

It was hard to pick a lemon this week as everybody played so well, but in the end it went to Naomi for the 'elbow incident'. After a slightly heated exchange a Newmarket player elbowed Naomi, who quite rightly appealed to the umpire, after which the Newmarket player turned and said, 'I didn't elbow you, if I had you'd know about it!' This wasn't the only slightly aggressive moment as both Lauren and Abby ran foul of Newmarket players with injuries to arms and ankles (get better soon!), with quite a bit of shoving going on throughout the match.

Man of the match went to Valerie this week, for some excellent work in defence, with a number of other nominations, Lucy, Grace, Iona, Cara and myself. Really well done to everyone who played, I think we were unlucky not to get a draw.