A View from the Zak! - New Years Edition

Worthing College Women's XI vs. Brockenhurst College


The girls came up against Brockenhurst in a BCS league match only a day before the big National Cup quarter final on the Thursday. With a few players rested it gave the fringe players in the squad the chance to shine with big games approaching. Holly Jacklin started at Right back and Izzy Arksey at Left back. This gave Chloe Lamley the chance to play in the middle of the park.
The game started slightly sloppily and the first event of the game proved to be a crucial one. Meg Cave’s persistence from the middle of midfield meant that the tackled the Brockenhurst Centre Half to be through on goal, the keeper came out and as Cave skipped passed, the left leg of the Brockenhurst goalie chopped her down just outside the area. Now in the premiership, the keeper could have no complaints about seeing red, but in Girls college football, a more lenient approach is usually taken. To almost everyone’s surprise the referee produced a red card and after 10 minutes the goalkeeper’s game was cut short after a 2 hour journey. A quick re-shuffle and a Brockenhurst defender became make shift goalie for the next 80 minutes.
From here on in, Worthing could have used this game to get a lot of possession and for a lot of fringe players to get decent match practise. But Brockenhurst didn’t back down even though they were a player down. The next event was maybe just as crucial as the first with the way the game stood, at 0-0 the very sharp Brockenhurst striker was played through on goal only to be taken down by a wreckless challenge from Stacey Johnson who let the Striker on the wrong side of her. Penalty! And surely as last defender risk of another red card, who knows what the referee is thinking? He lets the challenge go with only the punishment of the spot kick and no card to follow.
With the Brockenhurst player drilling the penalty high over the bar, it now looked like they had wasted any chance of putting Worthing under severe pressure. Worthing then began to play football, and start to take control of the game, the only criticism was that the final ball was maybe lacking a little bit of conviction. It was also noticeable from the side line that Worthing were not spreading the play, and exposing the player extra that they had. A Wiseman’s words from the side-line were ‘In defence, squeeze like cheese. In attack, spread like butter!’ And this is exactly what Worthing were not doing. Brockenhurst to their credit took advantage of this and got a goal to take the lead when once again the striker managed to get herself the wrong side of the Worthing defence to produce a neat finish from 12 yards. But Worthing bounced back with a scrappy goal, after a goal mouth scramble, the ball came off Sophie Frost’s stomach and found its way in to the goal to the despair of the battling Brockenhurst backline.
At half time, the main message was to show a bit more killer instinct and finish the game whilst saving a bit of energy and ensuring there were no more injuries, after Fleur Charman came off hurt due to a crunching tackle with a forward, which ended up ruling her out of Thursday’s game.
In the second half Worthing improved massively, with Brockenhurst camped in their own half for the majority of the game. But although Worthing had several chances they were finding it very difficult to take the lead, with the stand in keeper making some outstanding saves from Maddy Emmerton, Amy Potkins, Chloe Debaes, Sophie Frost and Jemma Kendall. After goal mouth scrambles, clearances off the line, last ditch tackles and great saves, Worthing took the lead from a simple rebound tap in, a strike from Sophie Frost could only be parried by the goalkeeper for Maddy Emmerton to just pass the ball into the back of the net which was greeted by a massive cheer from the Worthing girls possibly just out of relief. 2-1.
And after this, there were many chances to seal the tie but the third goal came from what can only be described as route 1 football. A massive drop kick from Lauren Binfield, left Amy Potkins in a foot race with the Brockenhurst defence and she only needed one touch to lob the bouncing ball over the head of the keeper to wrap up the tie. In the end a valiant performance from Brockenhurst, who were its fair to say, beaten after 10 minutes at the sight of the red card but they battled hard and didn’t make it easy for the Worthing girls by any means.
Player of the Match – Holly Jacklin, barely made a mistake all game, constantly looking to play football from full back, defended solidly and kept all her passing simple, a very impressive display from a girl who is looking to push for more regular first team football.

In extra news, the girls big game which came a day after this one, was called off ten minutes in after a 2 and a half hour journey up to Southend. The pitch was waterlogged and unplayable, so the game was stopped with Worthing 1-0. The match will hopefully be replayed on Friday 14th January in Worthing.

Zaki