If a person or performance sparkles, they are energetic, interesting and exciting.*

The L1s continued their run of away games (6 from 6). This week we were away to UEA, which unfortunately for Sam is not the same as ARU and meant she’d agreed to come to Norwich with us rather than play in Cambridge. V much appreciated though, thank you. I thought I’d honour our second consecutive trip to Norwich with a second green card in as many games for the same offence. Knowing I wasn’t 5, I went in for the tackle and argued that the player hadn’t stopped the ball (I still don’t think she did). Kate told us a few weeks ago to push the 5 metre rule, so I was just doing as I was told. [Ed - hmm, let's hope no Umpires are reading this. Oh, wait a second...] I was sent for 2 minutes in the naughty dugout and my shine was dulled.

Having not been at training on Tuesday I can’t say whether we did as Dave told us, but we dazzled our way to a 4-0 win. We spent most of the game attacking and played some pretty decent hockey. We were up 2-0 at half time with one very scrappy own goal by the GK on which I claimed the last touch, and one in which a glistening Jess Reed did all of the hard work for a far post tap in by me. I don’t remember a lot from the first half except an exclamation by UEA that one of our shorts shouldn’t have been allowed to continue as the ball wasn’t stopped outside the D. A slightly dodgy injection meant that a gleaming Alice had to run in to get the ball and pull it outside the D before passing it back in. We didn’t score from it so unsure her objection was necessary, even if she had got the rule right [Ed - no, not only was her objection unneccesary, it was also completely wrong! She was inventing rules here; a team can't score until the ball has left the circle and been brought back in, but they can move it around inside the circle prior to taking it outside as much, and in any direction, that they want].

The competitiveness ramped up in the second half. The first goal of the half came from a short, in which a glowing ball sent by Katie Mulholland found a shimmering deflection from Maddy. I’m unsure what happened, but at some point in the second half Tamsin and a UEA player ended up in a tangle on the floor. Twinkly Tamsin kindly picked up the UEA player’s stick to give it back to her. The disgruntled UEA player snatched the stick off Tamsin and did not look very sparkly at all. We played out a slightly gloomy 10 minutes late in the second half in which UEA thought they’d give our defenders something to do. The radiant back line cleared away any threat, and Boo made about 3 saves. Kate also got Sparkled,** which was a contender for lemon until the green card.

MoM this week went to shooting star Lucia, who intercepted / was gifted the ball from a 16 by the UEA centre back, proceeded to beat the defender and lob the goalkeeper. Beautiful.

Our day was finished off with last year’s most highly rated showers, they did not disappoint. Teas however, was a fairly disappointing picnic on the steps outside the SU, but the addition of soft mints was a nice surprise.

* Cambridge Dictionary
** The process in which you end up lying flat on the floor, face down in our attacking D and are being sat on by the UEA captain.