Old Actonians WFC Res

Match report: Mighty reserves vs Fulham reserves

Sunday 28th February 2010
Not Fulham Compton, actual Fulham Reserves
by Eilis Kerr

Match report: Mighty reserves vs Fulham reserves

Pitch: the witchcraft of 3G left most of us confused about where the mud was. Especially Harry.

Ref: Quite good for once. Linos were also not bad

Supporters. Fulham seemed to have about 1000, we had Harry’s sister.

Well where to start with this one. The ref delayed the KO because the type of goalposts had been declared illegal 3 years ago (strange but true) and some random blokes with bandages and plaster had to come around and wrap up the dangerous bits. I'm still unclear what was the dangerous bit, but there you go.

So when we did kick off, we lined up like this:

Eilis

Amy Preeti Marian Laurie Harry Nat Kat Jess

MV Dani

Stocks, Linda, Chelsea on the bench

We started well, the pitch causing us some problems as the ball tended to skid and zip along. Eilis had a lot of balls to pick up and clear as Fulham’s throughballs failed to meet their targets. As Randy said “They like their beckham balls” and we were often met with shots zipping across the pitch (and usually going out for a throw).

We had a couple of chances, but they went wide. Fulham were also wide or on target but easy to pick up.

We played really well, looking to contain them and catch them on the counter attack. Fulham slowly started to up their play and we rose with them. Soon however they started to connect with a few more passes, and they put us under pressure. A Fulham cross was mishit out of the area and it landed to an unmarked player who hit the **** out of the ball (I know this because it really hurt my hand when i touched it) and it flew into the bottom right hand side of the goal. 1-0.

Shortly after this we lost Harry to injury. We brought Linda on into the middle and Kat shifted out wide. Harry’s injury was caused by her being pushed over by a Fulham player who then in turn fell on her, with Harry’s knee taking the weight of them both. Ouch. Handily Stocks was there with video camera to film a nice close up of said knee.

We responded really well from the goal down and came close with a shot from Nat R that was on target, but easy for the keeper to collect.

Half time. We swapped Chelsea for Dani and stuck to our game plan of containing them and looking to steal a goal.

Sadly the best laid plans…within 10 minutes we'd conceded another two as Fulham came out firing on all cylinders and we had our usual 5 minutes to get back into it. a one on one and a shot from the right wing meant we had a lot to do to claw it back. We didn’t give up though and fought as hard as we could. MV was steaming around up front chasing everything she could and Amy and Kat teamed up really well down the right. We were trying to get the ball out wide to our wingers, and on the right we had loads and loads of space.

We swapped Laurie for Stocks and moved her to LW and Jess to LB to change things up there. And we did get a goal – a ball from Kat to Nat who looked up and saw stocks totally unmarked, passed it and Stocks lobbed their keeper. That was 3-1.

Fulham kept pressing and their number 6 chased Preeti who was trying to see the ball out. She bundled her over and for good measure sat on her head to complete the foul. We setup another attack from this, but the ball came zipping through midfield and they had a 1 on 1 that was converted for 4-1. Pants.

As the time was running down we committed a foul on the edge of the area, and they scored for number 5 in what was pretty much the last kick of the game.

So in the words of Nat Randall “They were clearly the better team” we can be proud of our run to the semi (better than being dumped out of the 1st round like last season!) and look forward to our next cup game next week.

PPoM: Nat R

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