Arran Ladies dominate in Dumfries
Dumfries Ladies 2s 0
Arran Ladies 2
Arran Ladies made the arduous journey to Dumfries last Saturday with a team of 12 players. It was a trouble-free journey, arriving in plenty of time for a good warm-up, as the team prepared themselves for a tough game against Dumfries Ladies 2nd team, who followed Arran up from the 4th Division last season.
Arran set out to play a strong defensive game, with Pauline Reid filling the goalie pads this week, Faith McKelvie playing as sweeper and the young team of Ellie Wood, Freya McNicol and Elyse Aitken covering right, centre and left defence. Strategic positioning of the defence widened the area of play on the pitch and this completely opened up the field. Dumfries attacks were met head-on, and cleared quickly.
Continuous pressure was applied from the midfield and forwards driving through the Dumfries defence. After just 11 minutes into the game, Lorraine Hewie skilfully manoeuvred through three defending attempts down the left wing towards the back line and, using a reverse flick, scored Arran’s first goal of the game.
This woke Dumfries up as they battled to try to equalise. Strong play from Dumfries allowed Arran’s defence to show that their training on Thursday nights had paid off, as free hits were taken and executed in order to switch the playing area and open up the playing field. This made things very hard for Dumfries to make any attempts at goal and, in their desperation to try to get the ball through, a dangerously high stick gave Anne Watts a blow to hand and face.
Play resumed in the second half with strong pressure from both teams. Pauline Reid made some fantastic saves and Dumfries were denied scoring from Arran’s strong midfield and defence. With 15 minutes left to play, a pass from Arran’s defence out to left mid, Susie Murchie, who switched the play over to the right wing with a strong accurate pass to Helen Thomson, gave Arran a chance for another goal. Helen gave one of her rocket shots from the sideline straight to Lorraine waiting at the top of the D, who finished with a onetouch volley straight into the back of the goal.
The final whistle blew with Arran winning the match 2-0. Captain Anne Watts was nominated dame of the game by the opposing team. This was a superb result, with really great teamwork and effort from everyone in the team.
Arran Ladies play Ferguslie Ladies at the ON-X sport centre in Linwood today (Saturday) with a 2pm pass back.
Any support would be most welcome.