Won 5-1
Scorers: Chirpy x2, Mel Clewlow, Emma Dunn, Lucy Barnes
DoD: Alice Dunn
For Canterbury’s quarter final match against the Army, we anticipated a fast and aggressive game. It was a pleasant surprise with Canterbury starting strong and dominating play. Canterbury kept the pressure up with some strong build up. Soon the Army started to crumble, giving Canterbury a short corner. The first short corner didn’t go quite to plan, with the second short corner needing some quick thinking and Dunny Junior sending a reverse into the right hand corner off a rebound from the keeper. Totally unexpected and unplanned that even Dunny Junior was surprised and wasn’t quite sure how that happened. Canterbury’s pressure started to rattled the Army a little and after some slick textbook hockey, we found the baseline and Chirpy found the backboard taking Canterbury to a 2-0 lead. The Army started getting into the game a bit more, but Canterbury held strong and ruffled the defenders yet again. We found ourselves lining up for another short corner. This time it was a Clewlow special… solid smash finding the bottom right taking us 3-0. With a bit of back and forth between the 25s and Barnsey spending more time on the ground than she usually does, half time finally graced us and not a minute too soon.
After a quick team chat, with Canterbury feeling buoyant, we were ready to get back out. This time the Army came back a little harder than expected and had Canterbury scrambling a little. Fortunately we managed to compose ourselves and pull it together with some great attacks making their keeper do some work. Canterbury were able to stretch the defence enough to create an overload with Vicky and Barnsey taking on the keeper. Textbook unselfish assist from Vicky! Canterbury were 4-0 up. Legs started to tire which saw the Army starting to bounce back, putting Canterbury under pressure. Dunny Senior started to crack under pressure and thought that she’d manage a slide on a somewhat sticky pitch to try an intercept a great cross. Needless to say she completely missed the pass and instead bowed down to the ground in slow motion, didn’t move very far but managed to provide some great entertainment for the crowd and players alike. Pressure from the Army kept building and they were finally rewarded with goal making it 4-1. Canterbury realised the game wasn’t over and we started to pull some great pieces of play together again. We started to ruffle the Army and stretch them once again. The defence opened up gaps we were able to capitalise… this time with a lovely pass down the sideline from Barnsey, which found its way to Vicky who took on the keeper with Chirpy in a 2-on-1. Once again Vicky showed some class composure and unselfishly drew the keeper in only to pass the ball off to Chirpy who continued her goal scoring extravaganza for the weekend taking Canterbury into a 5-1 lead. With 2 minutes to go, the Army made one last attempt but the whistle came too soon for them (and right on time for Canterbury) allowing Canterbury to head through to the next round. Semi-finals up next for the 035s!!
Semi Final at HOME vs Didsbury Northern Sunday 2nd April.