Newmarket Mens 1s put in an excellent performance on their travels against League leaders Ipswich 2s, but came away losing 3v0. Next up they will host mid table Sudbury 1s where a point will guarantee another season in 2NE.
Newmarket Mens 2s had keeper John Benedikz to thank for pulling off a number of excellent saves in the first half, to keep Newmarket level with Watton, before Toby Gould smuggled the ball past the Watton keeper to put Newmarket 1v0 up at the break. A combination of poor passing, some interesting patches on the pitch and lets be fair ruthless finishing from Watton, allowed Watton to turn the game around and after 15 minutes they were 3v1 up. Newmarket pulled a goal back through some cool finishing from Charlie Fenwick, but having lost their sub to injury early in the first half, Newmarket ran out of legs and conceded two late goals that made the result 5v2 to Watton.
Newmarket Mens 3s lost 3v1 to Felixstowe 3s in a rare off day. Newmarket lacked their usual flow and direction conceding at regular intervals through the match. Peter Booth with their only goal.
Newmarket Ladies 1s promotion chase received a boost when Kettering 1s were unexpectedly held 0v0 by Cambridge University 3s, whilst they eked out a 4v1 win over Bourne Deeping 1s. A brace each for Claire McDonnell and Grace Evans, seeing Newmarket over the line. Newmarket have 4 games left to the end of the season and whilst they are in pole position to claim second spot, are likely to need to win all 4 matches, next up they face Cambridge Nomads 1s.
Newmarket Ladies 2s have stuttered of late in their pursuit of promotion from 4NW and a 1v1 draw with Cambridge Nomads 2s was not what they were looking for. A strike from the top of the D by Sophie Robins leaves Newmarket needing just 2 points from their last 3 games to secure a top two finish. Newmarket will look to pick up 3 points when they host Cambridge South 5s next week.
It was always going to be a tough day at the office for the L3 this weekend with Cambridge Uni having scored 131 goals in 16 games, so far this season. If you take off the two 1v0 defeats they suffered at the hands of St Ives 3s, which will ultimately cost them the league title, they have averaged 9.3 goals a game and conceded only 1. Newmarket looked to try and better our 8-0 defeat from last time.
Team consisting of:
Liv Wright (GK), Zoe Bailey, Stef Heslop, Edith MacDonald, Vicky Benedikz, Renata Gazmuri, Natalie Rice, Jo Graham-Thompson, Peggy Claydon, Poppy Montgomery, Alex Rowe and Cesca Clow-Wilson.
When playing a team such as Cambs Uni, you will need to have an excellent game from beginning to end. Newmarket unfortunately had a bad day at the office in the first half and it felt at times that they were muggles in the wizarding world. Cambridge Uni capitalised on all their mistakes, pressured from the start and produced some moments of magic to Avada Kedavra their way to a 12v0 half time lead. Knowing that Uni had no keeper meant Benedikz tried to play the ball through the defence for Clow Wilson to attack but sadly no connections were made in the D.
At the half time chat we changed our play and team positions to play a half court press squeezing the space and denying Uni so much time on the ball and it worked well. Uni were limited in their second half chances and Newmarket were pleased to only concede 2. Positives were gained from the match with Newmarket having a lot of practise at defending short corners trying different routines – Keeper Wright ran out top D whilst growling to throw Uni off their game and the box technique was also deployed. Heslop playing in her second game did “break the box” on one occasion but Uni only scored twice making the full time score 0-14 to Uni.
POM: Liv Wright with a close runner up: Natalie Rice
Lemon moment: whilst distressing to see at the time one of the umpires fell over his laces and landed on the floor in the first half – not amusing at the time but certainly one to reflect on.
Lemon of the match: Seemed to be Captain Bailey for her impressive football skills however she did defend her heart out.
This was very much a game of 2 halves in which we learnt how to defend as a unit.
Learning points: 1) how to attack from a very defensive position to relieve pressure on the defence and 2) how to attack from scraps.