U13 Purple 24/25 - Hitchin Belles Reds

Today we played Hitchin away. 

We have recently signed 5 new players, 2 of which played for the first time last week and two had their debuts today. 

The team were buzzing when they arrived, probably because I’d promised to buy them all McDonald’s if we won 😂. 

We took the 30 mins prior to kick off to warm up with some good passing drills and getting all the players embedded and working together. 

On kick off we were a bit slow and took a few mins to warm up, however we were still dominating play with some great passing and footwork. You wouldn’t have known that 4 of our players have only just joined. We were in Hitchins half of the pitch the majority of the time and had plenty of shots on goal however their goalie was on point and made save after save. 

They didn’t get much time in our half of the pitch, but when they did our defence was strong and the ball wasn’t in our half for long. 

Eventually,  in the 20th minute of the first half Holly took the ball down the left wing, made a great cross to Ella who stuck the ball into the net. ⚽️💜🦩

we carried on dominating but Hitchin wasn’t making it easy for us as they kept the pressure on. 

At half time we reset the match to 0:0 in our heads to get the girls working again and doing exactly what they just did, but on kick off for the second half we were pushed to work harder. We were still dominating play, but as we saw hitchin start to get tougher and use their bodies more, we switched our play to ensure we had strength in the areas we needed. 

Nyah made her debut today and as she took the ball down the wing she made a fantastic cross to Katie who was right on target to score, but Hithin came up from behind swiping Katie’s legs from under her. She fell and smacked her head on the floor. After Katie came off Gracie took a smasher of a free kick, but one of their players jumped to get the ball away but we kept on playing with strength and speed. We made one mistake in defence and it looked like the ball was heading straight for Sophie but Nyah saw it and flew like a rocket from up field beating all their players to reach their striker just in time to go in for the attack and get the ball away. It was phenomenal to watch. 

A great solid performance saw us beat Hitchin 1:0. 

POTM - Nyah 🏆

Captain - Sophie 

Vice Captain - Katie