A good start to our post Christmas campaign, with no obvious signs of lethargy from seasonal over-indulgence ;)

We kept our defence fairly tight and pushed forward strongly from midfield into attack. We were eventually rewarded with a nicely worked goal - a calm tap in by Ollie, near the right post, from a strike from Sienna (I think).

We probably rushed the ball forwards a little too much, in the first half, leading to a few too many ping-pong turnovers, but generally we played well, retiring at half time 1-0 up.

S & B came out fighting at the start of the second half, putting quite a bit more pressure on our defence. Nevertheless, we fairly quickly turned the tide around again and I think played more constructively than in the first half.

Susy managed to connect with a lovely cross in from the right, from Ollie, to score an excellent goal. Very impressive as it was a difficult angle to compute.

Although we didn't have our top goal scorer with us on Saturday, her spirit was obviously there and inspired Mel (on fine form) to score a trademark Jemimah goal.

Suzie R, as sweeper, made some amazing blocks of hard hit, bouncing balls and also cleared the ball with lovely strong sweeps. Nicky was also back to sparkling, determined form as the left back, whilst Isla's speed and tenacity in defence was commendable. These performance gave them tied 3rd place in the MoM stakes. A close runner up was Sienna, who made incisive and confident runs forward, nearly scoring a couple of times. Out in front though was Mel, not only for her wibbly-wobbly goal, but also for her dynamic, Ninja-like play as centre mid.

Although S & B had no goalie, they didn't really make use of their extra pitch player to overload us. Instead they kept too many defenders behind the ball (and behind any of our forwards) giving us too much room in the middle part of the pitch to construct our attacks, especially in the second half.

Well done everyone for a strong performance.

Jane