Rutherford Ladies v Birtley Town Ladies [County Cup]

Today we faced Birtley Town Ladies for the second week in a row this time it being in the county cup.

The game started well for us seeing us take the lead after only 4 minutes of play. It was a superb ball over the top of the defence read excellently by striker Alex who challenged the keeper for the ball, keeping possession and taking it around her to slip it over the line giving us the early lead.

Birtley equalised on the 10th minute of play from a corner ball they were awarded against the run of play.

In the 38th minute full back Fairy played a ball through to striker Mel who took a lovely touch and set herself up for a shot. She struck the ball at the edge of the box lobbing the Birtley keeper with a lovely right footed strike giving us the lead for the second time in the game.

We entered the half time break with a 2-1 lead.

The second half saw us come out hard looking for the third goal to calm the game down. After around 5 minutes of play into the second half striker Mel raced towards goal with the ball at her feet. The Birtley keeper raced out taking Mel to the ground without contact to the ball and a penalty was awarded. Mel was sent off the pitch due to receiving treatment so wasn't able to take the penalty. Fellow striker Alex step up to take it aiming it into the bottom left hand corner but unfortunately the Birtley keeper dived the right way and got enough on it to put it out for a corner.

The game began to get fiesty seeing Birtley desperate for the goal to level the score line and us wanting to keep our lead. The referee played alot of stoppage time in the second half, more than we believed should have been played. Birtley attacked at us in the final minute of this seeing full back Ellen put in a superb challenge in the box. The referee deemed this a foul as Ellens hand hit the strikers face as she was falling to the ground. Birtley scored this penalty with 30 seconds to spare before she blew her final whistle.

We went into a penalty shoot out seeing Birtley win 3-1 and saw them progress to the next round of the County Cup. We wish them good luck in the next round.

Huge credit to the team today who battled very hard from start to finish being very unlucky to have not won the game in the 90 minutes.

Player of the match was awarded to our brilliant goal keeper Charlie for her phenominal saves during the game espcially towatrds the end of the game when Birtley got more on top of the game. She was absolutely fantastic today and certainly one of the best keepers in this league and above.