Having been roped into joining Cambridge South by my sister Jenny (S), and this being my first hockey match in a decent number of years, I suppose it is quite an honour (?) to get to write the match report, although, the circumstances that led to that are a bit less honourable…

It was a very warm day at Long Road, and most of the team arrived early to watch the L1s take on Cambridge City in their match. A strong win for them, combined with the warm-up prep that the team has been working on (thank you Rebecca for the stretching, and the whole team for making sure I’d warmed up my ankles), got us ready to go on the pitch when the whistle went. All the warm-up focus paid off when we had a chance with a narrowly missed deflection from the left post in the first minute of the match. But it didn’t take long to get more chances, and we got two in relatively quick succession with some great post-positioning and work up front from Jess and Rebecca. The first half continued in a whirlwind of rapid subbing, as only one sub meant off-pitch time was strictly limited, and a lot of running: from the back, it was really noticeable how South fought to make it to every 50:50 ball, and that paid off with lovely pick-ups in the attacking half of the pitch (Hannah, Maddy, Sophie and Rebecca stick in my mind, but it was really everyone playing midfield and forward!). Towards the end of the half, the running was starting to hit us all and City got a couple of breaks into our D. One of these lead to the short corner that would earn me the right to this match report; slipping over on the goal line as a short corner runner was not my finest hour, but I did make it to the ball, and no goals were scored (nor balls taken to the face), so it could have been worse.

At half time we were 2-0 up and had all done enough running for an entire match. Our focus was to make the ball do as much work as possible, and the half opened with another very closely missed opportunity for us from the post in the opening minutes. Although City stepped up the pressure in our defensive 25, lots of communication from Jenny and Nic at the back meant they got very few breaks into our D. Particularly great to watch were a couple of reverse hits from Nic to get the ball back into City’s half, a variety of lifted balls from Jenny to get us out of City’s press, Tabs and Jess working the ball up the left wing, and some switching round the back and perfectly placed balls up the right sideline from Rhi. Our third goal came mid-way through the half – from the back it wasn’t clear at all what happened (I think Jess has the goal, although someone correct me if I’m wrong), but City followed up with some good pressure on us at the back and managed to sneak one in: 3-1. With 7.5 minutes to go, after putting so much work into the middle of the pitch, Sam got a painful ball to the ankle, which stopped time and gave us all a breather (thank you, although I hope your ankle is okay), and gave us time to regroup for the last push, with no subs left. It was a long 7.5 minutes, but the ball stayed mostly in our attacking half, and we held the 3-1 until the final whistle

Thank you to the L2’s for welcoming me so warmly (literally, as well as figuratively) for my first match – you played so well as a team and are rightfully proud of your victory. PoM went jointly to Tabs and me, although everyone deserved it with the amount of work you all put in, and I also got the honour of LoM for my short corner slipping. No point joining a new team subtly, I suppose, although Jenny, I’m sorry for breaking the lemon-free Soderman streak