Last minute winner sinks Cardea Ladies

Cardea ladies arrived for this game in high spirits and full of confidence after 4 wins from 4 league games! With Christmas music blasting from the changing rooms it was fair to say the girls were looking forward to getting their first game played in 4 weeks.

The game got off to a good start with Cardea taking an early lead through team skipper Laura Rudd breaking through and slotting home into the bottom right hand corner. A few minutes later and Anne Langa made it 2-0, the winger timing her run well to arrive at the back post and head home! Cardea made 3-0 in the 20th minute! Nicola Anderson was fouled on the edge of the right-hand side of the Pinchbeck penalty area, the centre midfielder made it 5 goals in 3 games as she sent a rocket of a shot to the top left hand corner of the Pinchbeck goal!
Pinchbeck showed why there was a 0 in the defeat column for this season so far as they looked to fight back and in the 23rd minute they got there first goal to make it 3-1!
Cardea started to drop deeper and deeper which allowed Pinchbeck to push up in numbers! This resulted in them scoring their 2nd and making it 3-2!
Laura Rudd made it 4-2 just before the break! The skipper leading by example and trying to get some control back to Cardea unleashed a wonderful shot goal wards that left the Pinchbeck 6ft keeper for dead! But by now Cardea were just happy to get in at half time to get organized again!

Half-time: Cardea 4-2 Pinchbeck

Pinchbeck came out fighting in the 2nd half and put the Cardea back line under pressure from the start! This was help when new signing Laura Ramsaran came off having pulled a muscle and was replaced by Cardea's only sub Naomi Hall! And this is how the 2nd half continued for Cardea as the luck went from bad to worse!
First Courtney Coles, who had been a throne in Pinchbeck's back line, was taken out by Pinchbeck's centre back and had to be removed from play, the injured Ramsaran coming back on just to make the numbers up! Then Nicola Anderson went down with cramp, this was the first of about 4 times the centre midfielder had to receive treatment for it, on one occasion having to removed from play to help it ease off! Nicola was the followed by Natalie Upson, also going down with cramp! All the time Pinchbeck were making subs accordingly and punishing Cardea with every attack. Eventually Pinchbeck came away from the game with their 0 still in place and the Cardea Ladies feeling extremely dejected!

Full-time: Cardea 4-5 Pinchbeck

After the game head coach Daniel Gibbs said:-
There is so much I could talk about I would be here until our next game! I could talk about how many mistakes the ref made today, I could ask where she got 10 minutes added time from, I could talk about our lack of players when we needed them must, but what I will talk about is the 11 players who have just played through the pain barrier out there today and are extremely unlucky to walk away with nothing for their efforts! I feel sorry for how they have been let down, yet again, by others! I understand that people have to work or have other stuff going on but some just seem to have an excuse ready on Monday to let these girls down on the Sunday! Everyone, and I mean everyone, from top to bottom, needs to ask themselves what they actually want to achieve this season?