Litherland Ladies vs Birkdale D
October 11th, 2008 by admin| Date: | Saturday 11th October 2008, 1.00pm |
| Location: | Stonyfield, Netherton |
| Result: | Litherland Ladies (3)    Birkdale Diamonds (0) |
A grey, damp Saturday morning was the weather for the girl’s first away match of the season. After meeting up at Carr Lane, our convoy headed off to Netherton.
Upon arriving at the ground two things immediately struck us – first, the length of the grass, which obviously hadn’t seen a mower for at least a month, second, the pitch was much larger than the girls were used to playing on.
The game got underway with both set of players appearing to struggle on the playing surface, passes were short of there intended target as the ball held up on the long grass. Both teams seemed fairly evenly matched with a lot of play taking place in the middle of the park.
As the half drew on, the opposition, more familiar with the surface, began to take control of the game, making probing runs at the Diamond goal; these were met as usual though by the Diamond rocks at the back of C. Mentha and A. Sykes – with anything that squeezed past going out harmlessly wide, leaving E. Harrison relatively untroubled.
That was until eighteen minutes into the match, when Litherland won a throw in level with the Diamond box, a long throw found the opposition striker, who, unchallenged had time to turn and run at goal before firing a low shot inside the near post of the Diamond goal. 1-0 to Litherland which is how the half finished.
A rousing half-time team talk should have seen the girls fighting stronger for every ball in the second half, but with less than a minute gone they found themselves 2-0 down. A mistimed clearance in the Diamond area saw the ball fall to the opposition on the edge of the box, a hopeful lofted shot towards goal looked as though it had easily been caught by E. Harrison, but an error between keeper and defence saw the ball slip out of the keeper’s hands and creep agonisingly across the line.
To their credit, despite this setback, the girls didn’t let their heads drop, and began to fight to get themselves back into the game. Unlike the first half where the opposition had been stronger and more forceful in 50:50 balls, our girls stepped up their game. This was clearly evident five minutes in when T. Elliot, challenging for a loose ball cleanly won the ball and the battle of strength as the opposition player went to ground.
With Litherland down to 6 players, our girls sensed an opportunity to push forward in search of reply, but in doing so met some stubborn resistance. Seven minutes into the half saw our first casualty, as C. Molyneux, going in strong for a challenge got stamped on, forcing her off the pitch. Five minutes later saw another loose ball near the centre circle, saw M. Price win the ball with a fine challenge, however the opposition player went to ground leading to a totally uncalled for outburst from their manager, accusing our girls of being over exuberant in their tackles.
Momentarily down to five players, our girls pushed forward winning a throw-in level with the Litherland area, a throw by A. Welford was just about to be flicked on by M. Price only for her to be hauled to the ground from behind, as the ball rolled safely to the keeper, appeals for a free kick were turned away by the referee.
Only moments later, M. Price began again found herself in the Litherland box with the ball at her feet, as she was readying herself to shoot; an opposition defender came right through the back of her sending her to the ground where she received a very unfriendly stamp on her hip. This challenge ended her participation in the match, yet despite it being an obvious penalty, the referee somehow awarded a goal kick, despite the last player to knock the ball out of play was a Litherland defender.
This challenge along with the prior outburst sent an air of unease through the team, visibly they seemed taken aback and the concentration broken. This was compounded even further when every time we won a challenge to break forward, the opposition players seemed to go to ground with their manager calling the ref to stop the game.
Heads began to drop and due to the heaviness of the pitch, energy levels began to fade, this was the point when Litherland capitalised and produced the only enlightened moment of the match – racing forward down the left wing, they ripped through a demoralised Diamond midfield, a pinpoint cross to the striker in the centre left our defensive rearguard out of position leaving an easy tap in into an empty net. 3-0 to Litherland.
In the final moments, the team again tried their hardest to push forward, but with the constant interruptions of stoppages in play, they were unable to find that elusive goal. With no time allowed at all for stoppages the match finished with Litherland 3-0 Winners.
Yet again, Duggy and myself are really proud of all the girls this week, mistakes were made but we all shoulder the blame for those, its up to us and the manager to correct those mistakes. It was a really difficult game today, not so much the team in front of us, but more so the pitch and the underlying atmosphere in which the game was played.
We have now gone three matches without a win, so let’s aim to put that right starting next week.
