Herne Bay Ladies V Ridgewaye Ladies

Match Report - Anthony Deer, Ladies Manager

A long trip away to Ridgewaye who play in Tunbridge Well was on today’s agenda and the girls were all buzzing. The weather was perfect. The pitch wasn’t the greatest surface as it had two games played previous to ours. There was no change in the starting line up from last week’s fixture. The scene was set, but Ridgewaye didn’t read the script, for some reason our ladies didn’t start the game the way they have been in recent matches and found themselves a goal down for the first time this season in the opening ten minutes.

The ladies are still learning to be patient. With persistence under pressure, the team were rewarded with an equalising goal from Vicky Holness from a 25 yard shot that rebounded off the post into the net. The first half didn’t really go the way that we are accustomed to and rode our luck at times, however, just before halftime, Emma Brown followed up from a shot to make it 2 – 1.

A few encouraging words at half time seemed to uplift the ladies and within 2 minutes of the restart Kiya Mills burst through Ridgewaye’s defence and put the ball into the net to make it 3 – 1. We were fortunate throughout the second half with some outstanding defending from Charlie Hayes and Chantelle Bleau who both cleared the ball off the line what seemed to be certain goals. With Ridgewaye now pushing players forward more spaces were being created in which we manipulated with some great play from, Player of the Match, Lesley Kay and Lauren Wiltshire to get the ball forward for Vicky to score her second of the match.

With ten minutes remaining Ridgewaye got their second goal after finally breaking down our defence of Chantelle Bleau, Rachel Tracy, Enya Lynch and Charlie Hayes, who were tremendous throughout the second half dealing with everything that was thrown at them. In the final couple of minutes Vicky Holness completed her hat trick to leave the score finishing at 5 – 2 to Herne Bay Ladies.

To the ladies own accord, we didn’t play to our best ability however, another 3 points in the bag against a very useful team. The one main positive from today is that the ladies are taking on board what they are learning from the training sessions and bringing them into the matches with some very good results indeed. Our next game is Home next Sunday to Old Anchorians at Bell Meadow, St. Nicholas at Wade.

Team: Emily Johnson, Chantelle Bleau, Rachel Tracy, Enya Lynch, Charlie Hayes, Emma Brown, Lesley Kay, Lauren Wiltshire, Shona Clark, Vicky Holness, Kiya Mills
Subs: Natalie Lewis, Jo Franks, Clare Brown, Shantelle Rowden

Player of Match: Lesley Kay