Another Close Result!

Another close result, but to be honest it should never have been that way. Usually our strength, our defence was caught napping a couple of times today and what should have been a simple win turned into a struggle to hold a lead. The Gordon Head team played a very direct style that put our sweeper under pressure and we gave up three goals pretty cheaply. What I mean by cheaply is that GHSA didn't earn those goals as much as we gave them to them by a) indecisive goalkeeping, b) poor communication or c) committing too early in the tackle instead of jockeying and slowing the player and waiting for defensive cover. Yes their forward took her chances well, but each goal was easily defended. It reminded me somewhat of our game against Juan de Fuca where we were indecisive at the back and they took advantage of every mistake we made.

The reason we won today was because we built an early 3-0 lead from some great attacking play. We peppered their goal with 9-10 shots in the first twenty minutes and I really thought it might be a case of how many could we score. Jadyn, Erin and Robyn grabbed the goals, but there was some strong approach play from all of the Chaos. Maggie, Mara, Robyn and Erin all did some great work setting up chances, while our defenders, most notably Sydney and Genevieve made some timely tackles. As a team I really liked how we stepped up to win the ball, something we struggled with against Salt Spring. Their goal came against the play and was a bit of a sucker punch, but overall we played some great stuff and it was a pleasure to watch.

The second half wasn't quite as good as the first half, but we certainly had the majority of play. What we didn't do was take our chances with several players miscueing on their shots and crosses. Then GH scored to make it 3-2 and we didn't look so composed on the ball. Fortunately McKenna went on a long run and bulldozed through both their defender and goalie to make it 4-2. Game over? Not quite, as their #3 potted her third after we didn't deal properly with a long ball down the middle of the field. Still, we held on for the win, which on balance I think we deserved.

We've been working on our attacking play the past couple of weeks, but after toady I think we need to address some of our defensive positioning. It's never too early to work on trigonometry!