K's Defeated Again by Eagles Development team
You wouldn’t be mistaken if you‘re asking yourself, haven’t we already played this fixture? This was indeed a replayed match, ordered by the league, after Crystal Palace Development were identified as having played a suspended player in the original match back in September.
We had two subs for the second week running, though sadly Chelsea Woods failed a pre-match fitness test and so we were down to one sub at the kick-off. We had Alanah Sherwood making her debut today, and Lisa Nichols unavailable, but otherwise the squad was unchanged from last week.
Crystal Palace Development are a young, but very talented team, and came into this game with eight league wins out of eight. They attacked us from the start, and with only 10 minutes on the clock we were already two goals down. We could have caved in at that point, but quite the opposite. The team stayed disciplined and stuck to their jobs. Despite losing both Mairead Halliday and Emily Hobern for part of the game with niggles (though thankfully both were able to re-enter the fray later) and Patti Panok near the end with a hamstring strain, we frustrated Crystal Palace for the next 75 minutes and it was only with five minutes of the game to go that a Palace player wriggled free in our box to make the final score 0-3.
It seems almost certain that this Crystal Palace team will emerge as champions from our division, so there were lots of positives to be taken from this gutsy, hard-working, disciplined performance from Kingstonian Ladies to thwart our opponents for all bar the first and last few minutes of the game. Lily Dusting once again put in a great shift in goal, whilst our new-look back four of Alanah Sherwood, Ellie Bland, Zoe McLaughlin and captain Lucy Potter put up a formidable defensive shield throughout. In midfield, Mairead Halliday, Lace Edgcombe, Emily Hobern, Olivia Watson and Sarah Sinkins battled hard throughout. And, while we rarely threatened the Palace goal, Sophia Demetriou and Patti Panok both worked their socks off up front to ensure the Palace back four knew they were in a contest.
Team: Lily Dusting, Alanah Sherwood, Ellie Bland, Zoe Mclaughlin, Lucy Potter (c), Emily Hobern, Mairead Halliday, Lace Edgcombe, Sarah Sinkins, Olivia Watson, Sophia Demetriou
Sub: Patti Panok
Player of the match: Lily Dusting
