Rutherford Ladies v Consett Belles [Friendly]

Today we played our fourth and final friendly before our new season starts next week. We faced Consett Belles who finished second place in division 1 of the Durham County Women's league last season. After gaining promotion from the development division last season Consett is a team we will be facing this season so today was to be a good test for us competing in the higher league.

The game couldn't of started any better for us seeing our first goal of the game scored with only 20 seconds of play gone. It was the brilliant striking duo who netted first, set up by Mel and finished excellently by Crid. Consett battled back hard and their extremely fast winger got the equaliser in the 3rd minute of play.

In the 13th minute of play the Consett keeper took her goal kick but miss kicked the ball seeing it fall to Crid's feet, she beat the defending who challenged her for the ball and sent it crashing into the back of the net. This seemed to drop the belles heads and spurred us on to find the next goal. The team were creating some excellent chances, really pressuring at Consett's defence winning corner after corner. In the 21st minute Crid played in a superb ball from a corner finding striking partner Mel who sent It crashing into the back of the net. This goal seemed to bring the girls even more alive and the remaining 24 minutes of the first half saw us score another 5 goals, 4 from Mel and 1 from Rachel. Absolutely brilliant team work from every player on the pitch to create these goals and a superb performance.

The girls had a well earned break at half time and took on plenty of water. The weather was extremely hot today so the referee allowed a water break half way through each half. Despite this the conditions were hard for both teams and at the start of the second half it showed with lots of tired players all over the pitch.

Consett scored in the 65th minute of play. This woke the girls up as we had taken our foot off the gas. We began attacking continuously at them and won lots of corners. It was Charlene's corner that finished the game finding Mel's head and scoring our 9th and final goal of the game.

Player of the match today was awarded to Mel for her fantastic performance from start to finish. She bagged herself 6 goals and created dozens of chances. She was on fire today and was a huge headache for our opponents.

Well done to the entire team for a brilliant result and a fantastic team performance.