U16 Girls A beat Bournemouth to make Club history

The u16 girls produced the performance of their lives to overcome a spirited, skilful yet ill-disciplined Bournemouth team to reach the semi-finals of the EH Tier 2 Championships.

It is difficult to put into words how I feel right now. Bournemouth are a big club with many good players. For us to be able to not only match them, but outplay them for large parts of the game is an incredible thing for a club of our size.

For the first 10 minutes it was all Bournemouth. They pushed high and fast and our defence bent, but did not break. Despite the pressure (we barely got out of our half), Maddie did not have a save to make in this time.
Then we started to come into the game. We won a series of penalty corners. Millie had the ball in the net with her first touch, but the whistle had already gone for a PC. It didn't matter. In a move straight out of L1s training, Rachel injected to Liv who played the left slip to Fliss who struck it across the goal for Mia to tap in at the far post. Perfection.
The rest of the half was much more even. Millie was denied again by a PC whistle fractionally before she put the ball in the net, but Maddie had to make a couple of smart saves to keep us ahead and half time came at 1:0.

At half time we talked about how Bournemouth would come out at us hard and we would have to be at our best. For the next 20 minutes we dominated and realistically should probably have scored at least a couple more goals than we did in this time. Bournemouth picked up a green card for yet another stick tackle. 30 seconds after coming back on, she did a worse one and got a yellow card. From the free hit given for that Liv found Fliss who scored from the centre of the D to the corner.
Bournemouth picked up another green card to put themselves down to 9 briefly, but despite our pressure the score remained at 2:0 until the last 6 minutes. Bournemouth won a PC which was very well put away to pull it back to 2:1.
We won a PC of our own, and after a short scramble, Amelie found Mia who hit the ball in to make it 3:1.
Bournemouth scored again with 2 minutes to go, and then took off their keeper, but we held out to win the game.

This was an amazing performance by everybody. From back to front this was a perfect performance against by far the best team we have played this season. Well done everyone, and thank you to all the spectators for their support. It is much appreciated.