Sunday 9th November
A 12 pm home game against newly promoted Coalville Town led to much anticipation amongst the players and crowd for the U14s. Coalville had seen a very strong start to the season, taking 9 points from their first four games and sitting comfortably in third position in the Platinum league, four places above Rugby.
A slow start from Rugby saw Coalville take the lead on two minutes, with a well-executed free kick proving unstoppable. Five minutes later, the lead was doubled, as Rugby struggled to make an impact on the game in the early stages. Rugby were shellshocked, and it took a break in play for an injury for them to regroup and go again.
One of the key game plans for the Rugby Town girls was a high press, as they knew that Coalville likes to play the ball out from the back. On resumption of play, this came to fruition, as Freya intercepted a pass from the keeper and kept a cool head to slot home from 10 yards, halving the deficit. Five minutes later, the scores were level as Liss struck a beautiful free kick from outside the area to equalise.
This should have given the home team the incentive to go on and win the game, the closing stages of the first half seeing Maddie and Sophie going close to giving them the lead, but both being thwarted by last ditch defending and goalkeeping heroics.
Half time however, came at the wrong time, and as the second half kicked off it was clear the momentum had swung back to the away outfit. As the onslaught continued for much of the half, only some resolute defending from Iz, Abbey, Emily, Andrea (in her first game since coming back from injury) and Nancy kept the Coalville team out, aided on a few occasions from Amber’s goalkeeping heroics. The midfield had to buckle down and do the more defensive side of things in the final ten minutes, with Willow and Jessie having to drop deep to protect the back four.
Completely against the run of play, with a couple minutes to spare, Sophie latched onto a beautiful slide rule pass to go through one on one, only for the opposition linesman to inexplicably put his flag up for offside, causing the ref to blow his whistle. This caused mayhem on the bench and in the crowd and made the final few moments even more nail biting. The Rugby Town girls, as ever, retained their team spirit and proved too much for the opposition to break down. As the old adage suggests, the mark of a great team is still picking up points when they aren’t at their best – this was definitely the case on this occasion.