It was always going to be a tough day with some bigger clubs in attendance and a mixture of A and B teams, playing 7’s on a much larger pitch than our girls have been used to, having a goalie to deal with and needing to play short corners with masks! – quite a lot to take on!

They did us proud today, never giving up and always with a smile and a cheeky laugh to keep the team energised – even on a very long day out.
We started well with a 2-0 win against Bluehearts B, the girls had confidence and took the opposition team on with Isla L making some blinding runs down the right wing and bringing it across to the D where we had a result with goals from Lauren and Emily to lift the team’s confidence that we could hold our own here.

Next was a couple of 0-0 games (Harpenden & Hertford B), where we looked the better of the teams and were unlucky not to get the results we wanted. We would not have been able to keep the clean sheets without the outstanding goal stops by Hetty, she was taking big steps into her new role as the team’s stopper!

Next up was Hertford A, where the effects of the games started to show, and the team was a little slower on getting back to defend. Some great saves from Hetty again kept us out of trouble, but a well worked goal by Hertford sneaked in to give them a 0-1 lead. Some gutsy defending by Iris, Millie and Evie just couldn’t hold out the sheer number of Hertford players attacking… unfortunately we let in a late goal to make it 0-2.

It was time for some lunch and well needed rest, where we regrouped and discussed our tactics, positions and what we could do better with our defence…
Back into it, this time against the tournament leaders (Bluehearts A) and we found ourselves a little short on energy, letting in some goals from a very strong hitting team. We had some wonderful breaks down the middle with Emily & Lauren, but these were met with strong defences and the luck of the ball bounces -finishing up 0-2.

This loss was not going to stop the girls, next up was Bishop's Stortford where we pushed up the middle with the very present Elsie making runs into space, connecting with Isla J, Emily or Jessica to continue pushing it down the middle. We managed to get our first attacking short corner, where Iris pushed out to Lauren, the goalie ran forward, Lauren slipped the ball to the left, where Iris finished it off into the back of the net – a wonderful goal that was as good as any senior goal I have seen. Unfortunately, we didn’t have the ball go outside the very, very large D and the goal was disallowed… 0-0 was the result, but we again could have had the win.

The last game was against St Albans A, where we knew we would have a tough game… we had a good chat about using the space, how we would defend the short corners and that we needed to use all our remaining energy. We took it to them, all of the girls giving it that last bit of Haribo fuelled energy. We had strong defence from Irish, Millie, Evie, Elsie, Lauren, Jessica, and Isla J – everyone was back… Some amazing saves from Hetty, never giving up an inch and saving a certain 2 goals. In the end, it was one small lapse – our exhausted girls couldn’t stop the one attack and St Albans scored a lucky goal to win 0-1.
Again, it’s such a privilege to spend the day with the girls – they never gave up, they always wanted to talk about how we could change things, what we could do to improve. I think the future is bright with our girls’ team as they continue to develop and spend more time together as a unit.

As said, they all played with 100% all day – but the player of the day must be Hetty – amazing!!