On a gloriously sunny, though freezing cold morning, and in front of terrific support for both teams, the U12 girls faced the mighty Croydon Borough Girls for the second time in a cup semi-final in the space of a month. This time in the League Challenge cup.
It was clear from the start that, with their recent good form, the girls had grown in confidence. The first half saw a very composed, but hard-working performance, with Hanna, Lauren and then Clara in defence limiting Croydon to very few goal scoring attempts. Behind them, Abbey was having her best game yet in goal, catching everything that came her way, and distributing the ball very intelligently from the back. The game was a bit stop-start as the ball spent quite a lot of time in the ditch behind the home goal! Half-time 0-0.
The second half saw more of the same, with Croydon pressing, but a well organised Kingstonian defence seeing off the dangerous moments. A rare slip, however, mid-way through the half - a misplaced defensive pass across the face of our own area saw Croydon capitalise to go one up. And a few moments later, a failure to clear, saw the ball drop to a marauding Croydon forward on the edge of the box and we were two down.
Rather than give up, however, we threw caution to the wind, pushed bodies forward and, in the last five minutes, were rewarded when Lily converted from a goal mouth melee 1-2. Game on! Immediately, Brook went on a mazy dribble past three defenders, culminating in a shot that nearly had the home supporters celebrating. With time running out, the girls piled into the attack, and another goal mouth scramble very nearly resulted in an equaliser. Time eventually ran out on us, and the game ended 1-2. We wish Croydon well for the final - they are a truly outstanding team and it is a good sign of our progress that we were only just edged out today, by the odd goal in three. Thanks also to Derek for stepping in at the last minute and refereeing superbly well.
