The morning started with a series of complaints about how cold it was. Four degrees to be precise, but two degrees warmer than it was in Royston. This week H has decided to be a weather(wo)man. We all arrived at Long Road on time, joined by the ever-excited team mascot, Harley-Joe, who decided that laps of the changing room was an appropriate warm up for him.

Lucy’s pre-match warm up involved babysitting a young boy whose parents had forgotten there was no basketball as it was half term. He was, however, very excited to watch his first ever game of hockey. He was also picked up by his parents and isn’t still at Long Road.

We started strong and scored within the first five minutes. Dani played a bit of tennis with the keeper before pushing the ball past her right foot to put us one-nil up. After this, we got a little complacent and couldn’t convert again until the second half. Jess was joint Lemon and when asked to cover the first half of the game, her contribution was, ‘It wasn’t great.’ She’s not wrong. While we worked hard and created chances, we couldn’t convert. One such example was when Sam made a great run up the wing, crossed it to me only for me to kick the ball instead of scoring. Had this only happened once, I may have avoided Lemon. Unfortunately, it did not. Aoife, in a Man of the Match-winning performance, made some fantastic runs up the wing and fed ball after ball through to the mids and forwards. She, H and Lucy also closed down any threats at the other end of the pitch.

We went into half time still only one-nil up. Paul gave us a pep talk and we all agreed that we hadn’t taken control of the game. It was time to start again and play our game.

We went into the second half a lot stronger and quickly won a penalty corner. After a reverse box, Eimear slipped me the ball back on the P spot and I flicked it over the defender’s stick and we were two-nil up. Our third goal came from a ball slipped to Dani from Aoife and charged down the pitch. Dani drove into the D along the baseline and passed me the ball to make it three-nil. Sarah rocketed a ball into the D shortly after this. I picked it up, put it through the keeper’s legs and made it four-nil. Our fifth and final goal came from a ball into the D from Jess and a deflection from Dani through the keeper’s legs again.

Notable points:

• Jess took a ball to the head (she is fine for those concerned)

• Jenny ran her socks off as usual

• H’s sanity is intact (questionable) now that we have beaten Royston

• Paul is also happy that we beat Royston

• Lucy went one-on-one with one of Royston’s best players and beat her every time

• Kicking the ball more than three times in a game doesn’t stop you getting Lemon even if you score a hat-trick

• Sarah, Jess, Grace, Sam and Rebecca cleaned up in midfield all game

• Louise touched the ball four whole times

• Eimear, Hannah, Dani and I made life difficult for Royston’s defenders

• We’re quite good at hockey when we pass to each other and not to the opposition

Overall, a relatively solid team performance and one more win ticked off.