By Laurie Swan
With two girls withdrawing late in the week, Eiti called in Femke and emailed to say that she may have recruited Jenny McGovern, but it would “depend on how rough she was feeling” following the Stu/Cat wedding. As Jen failed to appear, we can only assume it all ended very, very messily!
So, we were seven and the divisions suffered an emergency rejig. Playing in a short division takes some very different tactics, so Femke, Tony and Tom got the nod to try get as much height and experience in as we could. Down the other end, Abbey, Jenny B, Martin and Laurie headed into defence.
Unfortunately, Bromley were first on the scoreboard. This division seemed to really only have one avenue of attack, but he was pretty fast with a very good shot on him and he soon put in a mid-range shot from the side. But, the short division were moving the ball around effectively and Tom soon found himself in space to pop a short range shot in and evened things up.
We then established a useful two-goal break when Jenny scored a mid-range and a runner. But Bromley pulled one back quickly with the same scorer as their first, which lead to a bit of a tactical change from the defence to disrupt him and get in his head a little. Shutting off his support lines and dropping off for the collect seemed to do the trick and he didn’t score again in the match. Tony then dropped in a long shot to re-establish the two goal break. Bromley got the next before Abbey and Femke both scored running in shots and we went into half time 6-3 up.
The second half saw fantastic defence, especially by the short division. Sadly, we troubled the scoreboard far less than we troubled Bromley’s passing – interceptions galore were made by both divisions, but goals were harder to come by. Eventually Femke put in her second before a late Bromley goal made the final score 7-4.
It’s always good to get a win, but a win with seven players is special. Special mention to the splendid work by the short division – Femke, Tony and, especially, Tom, who had never had the joy of playing short before, but got the hang of it very quickly.