The team, I am told, met at Long Road in very wet conditions, at 8am on a Saturday. Poor Aoife had wet feet before she’d even got in to a car, although she had replaced her broken stick so there were pros and cons. The team set off to battle the monsoon rains while I was sat smugly in the warmth of my house. Living thirty minutes closer to London than the rest of the team has it’s perks.

Having pulled up to the car park, I checked my phone: text from Izzy saying, ‘Changing room 1’. What I was actually looking at was a pair of beach volleyball courts. I phoned Izzy to check I was actually in the right place. I was, and was told to keep walking. I found the rest of the team in changing room 1, dove in to the bag for a yellow shirt, only to find there were only large’s left. I put on my personal parachute and did my weekly attending to Izzy’s hamstring. We all listened with baited breath to hear what words of wisdom Izzy was going to come out with this week. As usual, it was pretty inspiring.

We headed out on to the pitch and found that our opposition hadn’t yet arrived. We warmed up, and with ten minutes to go they had started to amble on to the pitch. The game started with pretty poor hockey from both sides. The best way to put it was that everyone looked a little confused as to what we were doing. This may be because we had to be up earlier than most of us did for work. Lauren found out that she has done an hour and a half’s work every day before Jenny has even gotten out of bed (teacher v something to do with science). It turns out, science does actually sleep. Anyway, back to the match. UCL had a very strong player – their captain – who ran their forward line and made our defenders work hard. Not unlike our own captain. The first half was fairly uneventful. Both teams had chances but couldn’t convert them into anything meaningful.

We were treated to our second inspiring talk by Izzy at half time, with inputs from Jenny who is also pretty inspiring herself. We were told to calm it down; we were frantic on the ball and we didn’t need to be. We went into the second half much stronger. UCL scored first, their captain running the ball up a significant length of the pitch and managing a reverse flick. It was fairly impressive, albeit very annoying. Lydia made some great saves and Aoife (and new stick), Maddie, Nic and Charlotte managed some beautiful switches across the pitch and allowed us to drive hard up the wings. Rebecca pulled out the v-drags once again, to great effect. Grace was her usual solid self, Lauren took a break from sweeper to play in midfield and I, Jess W, ran around tackling in the middle. It is possible that I went a little too hard on a tackle, missed the ball and got the stick. In my defence, I stopped and held my hands up. The umpire blew the whistle, recognised I had stopped engaging and said, ‘Yes, UCL ball. That was quite horrible.’ LoM sealed for me.

Our goal came from a good drive up the wing by Dani A, who pulled it back to Izzy, who beat one player, then a player at top D and then a defender sitting deeper in the circle. She smashed the ball past the keeper’s right foot before she had even had a chance to move. It was pretty good goal if she doesn’t say so herself (disclaimer: she said this many times). UCL scored shortly after this. I’m not entirely sure how this happened but it was their captain again and it was quite good. We really piled the pressure on after this. Our forwards were working hard to create chances, Jess was on the post, Eimear was tackling and distributing, Dani A was driving in and Izzy was just a delight as usual, but we just couldn’t find another (a common theme this season).

The game ended two-one to UCL despite it being very evenly matched for the most part. MoM votes went to Rebecca, Charlotte and Lauren but it was Izzy who won overall, for her goal and excellent distributing.