Hitchin Town Belles Under 12

Match Report 2006-2007

Under 12 Team Photo Sunday 29^th October 2006

Sunday, 29 October 2006

St Albans City Youth U12 3 v 3 Hitchin Town Belles U12

Home Counties Girls Football League; U12 Division 2

Players: Beth, Amy, Christie (Captain), Ruby, Maddy, Carmen, Tamsin, Sophie, Chloe, Helen, Bethany.

After taking leave of Nigel at Ickleford (working on a Sunday - he must be dedicated!), we made our way to St. Albans without incident. Turning up at the ground we found a lot of football going on, and identified our opposition on a pitch without goal nets - a late start seemed on the cards. In the event some very rapid action from our hosts had the pitch set up and nets fitted ready to start just a few minutes late at 14:10.


Win that header!	Belles attacking

The first few minutes saw Hitchin come under a lot of pressure, with the Belles labouring to get the ball out of our half over the fairly long grass. We had started with Beth in goal, Chloe, Amy, Ruby and Captain Christie playing a defensive diamond, Bethany, Maddy, Carmen and Sophie in midfield and the pairing of Helen and Tamsin up front. After the initial pressure the Belles started to take more control of the game, and Tamsin pounced on a defensive error by St. Albans to set up a shot for Helen which sadly went wide. Unfortunately St. Albans were also making good use of the ball, and on the 10-minute mark a break away attack resulted in a shot which Beth stopped but couldn't hold onto - the rebounding ball fell to a St. Albans attacker whose shot beat the Hichin defenders rushing back to try to stop it going into the goal. This setback prompted the Hitchin players to come back even harder, and within 5 minutes we were level after Tamsin won a tackle close to the centre spot and took the ball all the way to the St. Albans goal and finished with a super shot into the top left corner of the goal. The pressure continued, with Hitchin having the better of the game in all parts of the pitch. After 10 more minutes of good football Tamsin again showed how to score with a superb shot from the corner of the penalty area which looped over the St. Albans goalie into the middle of the goal. The last few minutes of the half saw St. Albans coming into the game a bit more, and shortly before the whistle Hitchin were saved by the offside flag from what would otherwise have been a good goal from a well-worked passing movement by St. Albans. To finish off the half we suffered two injuries in quick succession; Christie took a very strongly kicked clearance ball to the cheek as she dropped back towards her own goal, and when she had recovered from that and bravely returned to the match Amy found herself badly winded by a ball to the midriff. The whistle came as a relief to the team - time to recover and regroup!


Staunch defence from the Belles	On the attack; but where's the ball?

At half-time we switched around a little; Christie taking up the goalie's top and Beth coming outfield to play in attack, with Helen moving back into midfield. A tough battle continued, with the players showing signs of getting tired. Maddy at the front of defence was involved in almost all the play in the middle of the park, with Carmen and Amy in particular showing how a 'big boot' is sometimes the surest way to convert defence into attack! Helen was discovering how hard it is to cover the ground in midfield, but her speed in recovering position and getting back to cover in defence was greatly to our benefit on a few occasions. Nothing very productive came from the first part of the half, and it was not until 15 minutes had gone by that we saw Hitchin making a meaningful attack. This time Beth and Sophie combined to produce some superb passing moves, which ended up with Tamsin having a shot on goal from just 6 yards out. Sadly the attempt went over the bar, but we were certainly showing some intent to score. The third goal actually came a few minutes later when Beth won the ball just over the halfway line and bore down onto their goal, sweeping all opposition aside, to finish with a shot on goal that gave the St. Albans goalie no chance. At 3-1 up with just over 15 minutes to go we felt the win was definitely on. As the half progressed however the freshness of the St. Albans players (they had an ample supply of substitutes, and we had none) seemed to be making an impression. More and more the play was concentrated in the Hitchin half, and the feeling that St. Albans were threatening our goal with every break-away was growing. With half an hour gone St. Albans got the goal that they had been threatening to score for some time - a long ball down their left wing provided an opporunity for one of their players to run into space and our defenders just couldn't get back to cover. The St. Albans player managed to beat Amy, our last line of defence, and then drilled the ball past Christie into the goal. We still had a lead, and with just minutes to go hoped to hold onto our win, but with almost the last kick of the match St. Albans won a corner. The tired legs in the Hitchin defence now seemed to win the battle, and the corner came in, bounced around a bit with no-one managing to clear it, and dribbled into the Hitchin goal. Hitchin hardly had time to kick off before the full-time whistle was blown. So, after a tough match, and one which we led for most of the game, we came away with just one point - still a draw is much better than a loss, and the girls worked hard for this point. We look forward to another match up with this team, and expect to improve the outcome on that occasion.

Player of the match: Maddy - a real whirlwind in midfield!.

Report by John Davey