Cardiff Romp to Bristol Victory
Here’s Josh’s report of our storming display at Bristol’s annual sunshine fest. A combination effort saw Kristina, Matt, Aidan, Taff and Zoe from city to boost the Dragons ranks of Amy, Ang, Josh, Helen and Kat. The mix ‘n’ match approach clearly favours Cardiff players as we confidently dispatched our local and not so local rivals to claim our first tournament win of the season.
Bristol’s tournament always seems blessed with good weather, and all day we played under a scorching sun. There was an occasional gust of wind to cool us down, but this wasn’t entirely welcome, as it brought with it a strong smell of, well, horse-shit.
First up was a Bristol Uni side who were really just out for a nice day in the sunshine and they never threatened Cardiff in a 7-0 victory. Helen, Zoe and Taff all scored twice, Aidan grabbed another from Kat’s pass.
Next up were Cambridge, who had some very strong players but also a couple of weak links. We managed to expose one early with Josh’s running in shot, but an equaliser changed the complexion of the game. With Cambridge having control of both posts and front defending effectively, they denied Cardiff many clear shots and although we defended well, they got a winner. 1-2.
Next up were a Scratch side made up of Horfield players. We breezed into a 4 goal lead, Josh and Zoe at one end and Taff and Angharad at the other. From then on it went rather horribly wrong with our shooting as we missed sitter after sitter. Zoe and Josh were profligate, but the main culprit was Kristina who just couldn’t get the ball to drop. Just getting her eye in, surely. Fortunately good defence meant that we only conceded 1 at the other end. 4-1
Exeter were up next, and Kat stepped up with 2 early goals. After the change though we struggled to build on the advantage and with Rachael and Alan a threat we need Matt to put in a superb effort in defence, winning practically every interception and collect around the post. Helen grabbed her second brace of the day at the other end and we eased to a 4-0 win.
Our last game was against Pure Magic, a scratch side built around Jack and Kevin Jones, who had won all their earlier games. That had been partly due to a regular contribution from Cardiff’s girls though, and without them they looked rather weaker. But Cardiff had also been weakened as we’d lost Aidan to his mother’s birthday party and only been able to replace him with Taunton’s star Dutch player, Ingmar. True, Ingmar did open the scoring from nearly halfway, but I’m sure Aidan would have done something much more spectacular. The Magic equalised, but Taff’s short shot and Matt’s long range effort put us 3-1 ahead. With Kevin and Jack looking threatening in attack though, this wasn’t enough and Taff put in a colossal performance to prevent his Welsh squadmates from scoring. At the other end Kristina finally managed to score and Ingmar burst through for a runner. 5-1 and we went through as group winners, Cambridge the other team from our pool into the semi-finals.
Ingmar turned up on the opposite side in the semi, as we took on Taunton, while Kevin switched sides as our next replacement for Aidan. Taunton’s tactic are pretty familiar to us now, using the girls to assist as the guys score the goals (Cardiff teams of course would never do this). With Cardiff’s girls working brilliantly to cut out the feeds this proved tricky and we managed to minimise their opportunities. Attacking, Kristina had the beating of her player and with the rest of the team working well against much taller opponents to keep giving her the ball she put us 2 ahead. At the other end we were finding goals harder to come by though and David Hill was a major threat for Taunton. First he grabbed one back from mid-range then after the ball fell loose from a free pass scored the equaliser, with time running low. Taunton had the momentum, but they still hadn’t worked out how to stop Kristina and she completed her hat-trick to re-establish the lead. With virtually the last attack of the game Matt set up Taff and we won 4-2.
Cambridge were back up in the final, with Jack (in the first half) and Kevin (in the second) sharing ringer duties. The game followed a pretty similar pattern to the first match with chances hard to come by as both sides front-defending well. Cambridge eventually took the lead, but just before half-time Kristina equalised. The second half was just as tense. Kevin put us ahead from long range, but Cambridge pushed hard for an equaliser and came close on several occasions. Finally Josh burst past his player to draw the switch, and Kevin finished the game off. 3-1 to Cardiff, and a tournament victory.
All day we played really well, but definitely improving as the day wore on and we got to grips with playing out doors. Our defence was particularly impressive, only conceding 7 goals in as many matches, with Cambridge’s goal in the final the only one of which was scored past our girls. They were just as effective in attack, and it was great for a Cardiff team to have the girls score more of the goals. It was also good to see how in the later matches we defended as a team cutting out assists and making some excellent switches.
Thanks to Bristol for another well-organised tournament and the scrumpy, to Amy, Kat and Taff for driving people, and to Kristina and Zoe for admirably taking on reffing commitments.
Scorers
Kristina 5
Taff 5
Helen 4
Zoe 3
Kat 2
Josh 2
(Ingmar 2)
(Kevin 2)
Angharad 1
Matt 1
Aidan 1
(plus shedloads of goals playing for various scratch sides)