Most of the team started out feeling a little worse for wear after having a few too many drinks the night before to celebrate, and commiserate, my imminent departure from the club on to new adventures, but we weren’t going to let our hangovers get in the way of what we hoped would be a continued winning streak!

The game started in the beautiful sunshine, which may have caught us off guard as Haverhill came running down with an attempted score in the first minute but were given a short corner to continue their aggressive attack.

It seemed to go on like this for almost the entire first half of the game, with South’s solid defence preventing many goals although there was a near miss when Haverhill seemingly scored but the umpires decided to give a long corner as the ball clearly bounced off a Haverhill foot into the goal. Despite this small reprieve, Haverhill came back to score their first goal.

After a very hot and sticky first half, Haverhill had managed to put two more past Loopy with the score at three-nil. Although it felt like the ball didn’t leave our D, we certainly got a few chances with our speedy forwards running up the pitch only to be met with a very formidable-looking Haverhill goalie.

The second half of the game followed a similar structure, with plenty of unsuccessful short corners for Haverhill. However, whilst this was happening Haverhill’s goalie decided to play outfield and unfortunately as a very skilled player she managed to get a further goal for the opposition.

Strangely enough, when watching the L1s play the previous game we witnessed a penalty flick granted to South, which we were all excitedly discussing as we hadn’t seen one before. Little did we know that we would actually encounter two in our own game on Saturday. The first came from a shot from Haverhill which smacked straight into Ania’s foot on the goal line, resulting in her nomination for the Lemon vote.

The second penalty flick came in the second half and in the rush of players to get the ball away I’m not quite sure what happened… However Loopy demonstrated her epic goalie skills by lunging towards the ball and hitting it away from any chance of Haverhill scoring, which gave Loopy the Man of the Match vote. Of course, that and many of the other brilliant saves allowing us to walk away with what I would call a respectable five-nil loss.

After the defeat we found out that quite a few of the Haverhill players were in fact from their L1s team so in the end we weren’t too hard on ourselves that we didn’t manage to get a goal this week; maybe next week will be the week though?!

So although I didn’t get to witness another win for the South L3s during my last game, it was really fortunate to have such warm and sunny weather which we enjoyed by sitting outside at the pub afterwards, tucking into some much-needed cake!

A couple of mentions; Nicole for demonstrating how much she is improving - don’t go near that girl if you don’t want to be tackled and lose the ball everytime!

Liz for her courage when getting hit on the ankle from being in close proximity to a rather ruthless Haverhill player but managing to ignore the pain and bounce back onto the pitch with no fear.

Rosie’s ability to sprint up the pitch like lightening never fails to amaze me and I can’t go without saying how much the team has improved over the last few months and how far they have come. It won’t be long before the L3s are shooting up the league table!

Lastly I wanted to write a quick note about all the great people I have met in my team and the club. I’ve had the best time catching up at hockey training and learning valuable new skills, chatting over a glass of wine at the Grain Store or running around Mill Road hunting for Halloween clues. Thank you to Laura also, who has been so welcoming and, although I am a little biased, the best hockey captain ever!

I will certainly miss Cambridge South and I wish my team all the best for next season. GO SOUTH!