Ladies 2's beat Bicester to stay 3rd

The visiting oranges were made to work hard for their 3 points this week against a much improved Bicester.

The home side are bottom of the table but played some competitive hockey in patches and certainly never gave up fighting.

The early breakthrough came after Caitlin Edgar made a great run down the right and send across a lovely ball for Kate Wensley to slide home after just 5 minutes. With that great start saw P&R go on to put lots of pressure on the Bicester goal but no killer finish which would give them a 2 goal safety net!

Bicester played their way into the game and piled on the pressure from about 20 minutes onwards with P&R dropping their tempo and losing some of the crisp passing that had seen them get so many chances early on. Jo Coate kept the oranges in the game blocking several shots at the end of the half, but couldn't do anything about a hopeful smash into the D that the umpires deemed to have been touched by a Bicester player to gift them an equaliser with the last touch of the half.

After lots of half time "come on girls we can have this!" type rants, the oranges again put on early pressure and looked the most likely to score but couldn't find a clean finish or lack confidence to get a strike on goal. P&R had a great spell with 55 mins on the clock and racked up a succession of short corners which got closer and closer to working! Finally the efforts paid off and 10 minutes before the end Naomi Ashcroft popped up to slot home at the back post.

There was a nerve wracking final 10 but the visitors held on and grabbed all 3 points.

The team are home this coming weekend at 1pm vs Oxford Ladies and really need to build on this win to get some confidence going!

#orangelikeholland #proudcaptain