The girls travelled a short distance to Swalwell Ladies. The last time the two teams faced saw Swalwell win the game 7-4. Since then the girls have worked hard week in week out at training and the improvement in the team has shown in their last few games, although the results just weren’t going our way.

Today we had a small but strong squad, unfortunately two of our regular back four were missing today, one went shopping the other took a smash to the face at training on Tuesday resulting in a broken nose, this saw a squad rotation and players playing out of position. Thanks to Rachael and Hannah T who offered to go in goal as we still are without a goalkeeper.

As the game started we were a little shaky, trying to adjust to our new positions. I mean we did have our centre forward playing centre half haha. Swalwell then took advantage of this with a ball over the top to Megan Watson and she was one on one with the our goalkeeper seeing her find the back of the net. 1-0 to Swalwell. We shuffled the team around again and asked Claire to play centre half, a role she played immensely, between her and Jen they won anything that came near them for the rest of the game. We also brought Blondie in to centre midfield, hopeful that her, Scottish and Remi would link up and help turn the game.

Once the changes were made the girls settled in the game and played some wonderful football, great link up play between the midfield and strikers, and great defending from the whole team. We created chances however Swalwell defended excellently and credit to them we went into half time 1-0 down and resulted in us changed formation from 4-5-1 to 4-4-2.

There was a number of changes at half time including Hannah T coming out of goal and going upfront, Rachael going in goal, Hannah C pulling onto the right wing and Laura coming back on into central midfield.

From the first kick of the second half it was all Rutherford, the change in formation allowed Blondie and Hannah to be up top supporting one another. Our two wingers Remi and Hannah give everything and never stopped. Laura was solid in midfield, it’s standard for Laura to fall over a lot and today was no different, she loves to keep us entertained, but seriously she had an amazing game, she never give up and picked out some great passes, it was great to see the relationship between her and Scottish and the the good link up to the wingers and strikers. Our chances came and went. We had a few near misses then at 71 minutes Blondie put a great ball through to Shona who ran through took it past the keeper and slotted it home, the dead local was officially broken.

From then on it was Rutherford attack after attack, trying desperately for that winning goal. On a couple of occasions Swalwell broke but the defence picked everything up. Claire in particular put in a couple of crucial tackles which would have allowed their striker to be 1-1 with our keeper. A tackle change in formation from Adam saw us go 3 at the back, it was an all or nothing decision, today we took a risk and boy did it pay off. Within 4 minutes of this change Ellie knocked in a great ball and Shona managed to get a shot, it was blocked and the rebounds fell to Blondie….. Blondie made no mistake than to slot it home, this was her first goal since returning from retirement at the start of the season…. She thoroughly deserved it.

As this goal went in the crowd went mental, on that note thanks to the first team and spectators for coming down to support the girls. The team then resorted back to 4-4-2 for the final few minutes. They almost got a 3rd goal with Ellie on the ball, Scottish ran from behind as she received the ball putting it though the keepers legs and into the net, we were all confused when the ref said offside as she ran from behind…. But hey ho that’s football, the game ended Swalwell 1 - 2 Rutherford.

Player of the match was extremely tough to choose today due to the entire team playing brilliantly both as a team and as individuals but in the end we decided on Claire Caveney to be awarded the title due to her fantastic work rate, effort and solid defending during the entire game. Huge well down to Claire❤️⚽️