Rich’s Blog: City 2 Goes Top The Hard Way

I’ve never ever been top of a league before. It’s a strange feeling, but a good one.

Yes, I’m talking about City 2, who are currently top of the OKA second division (north) with three wins and a draw from our first four matches. Our results have been built on tough defence and grinding out results rather than pyrotechnics in the attacking department but, hey, we’re winning.

So things feel good, but it was very different three weeks ago. 

On 9 November, we fought back from four behind against an Abingdon 3 side with a smattering of first team and second team players to draw 7-7. The fightback was great, but I was still bitterly disappointed with the draw after I had scored a lesser-spotted-running-in-shot to put us 7-6 up with two minutes to go. 

Still, that defensive performance — as well as the 7-0 win against Oxford University in our first match — has been the basis of results since against the league’s top two.

On 16 November, we ground out a 7-6 win against Abingdon 2, although it could have easily gone the other way. We went 6-4 up with a cheeky straight-from-the-restart goal by Charlotte, and then proceeded to let them score two to make the score 6-6. Thankfully, Arge pulled us out of the fire with a fantastic long shot and, this time, there was no last minute concession.

We shouldn’t underestimate how much confidence that has given us. Abingdon 2 went through last season undefeated and have a strong side across the court, so they are certainly no pushovers. It shows how we have progressed from last season when we sometimes struggled to field a team!

And we followed that win on Sunday (23 November) with a 6-4 win against Didcot 2. Again, their team is full of players with at least a couple of years’ experience, so this was always going to be a tough one. Let’s not forget that they put 19 past City 3 a few weeks ago, so they are in a scoring groove. But we took a two-goal lead in the first half, kept up the pressure and never let go.

That’s not to say we did it the easy way. At half time, coach Alice said the first half was the best she’d seen us attack, so we promptly went out in the second half and, err, forgot everything we’d been doing right in the first half. Slapped wrists all round! Thankfully, strong collecting, especially by Mike, helped us to restrict their chances and squeeze through with another narrow win.

So, all in all, a good start for City 2 and nice to be top of the league with a third of the season gone. There’s still a lot we can do to improve our movement in attack. However, we have been doing a solid job of keeping the opposition out, and that should be a strong platform for this season.

- Rich Heap, web editor