BNU PRETENDERS 0 – WAIKANAE 6
Why can’t I play like Waikanae…?

OH DEAR…!  It was a bit of a comedy of errors this week – no balls, no whistle, no coach (and no goals…!).  Rumour had it that our coach had resigned (but we have it on good authority that he was actually on a jolly in Nelson – a much more feasible story).
 
And so it was that an injury-prone team took to the field, with Toni declaring a pre-existing injury, Anna coming off the pitch with a pulled hamstring, and Anita spending some time on the sidelines cuddling up to an icepack… It wasn’t the most promising of starts…  (And unfortunately the final scoreline of 6-0 delivered on these low expectations…)

On the positives, without our coach to help us on the sidelines, we managed to shuffle our team well (especially once we didn’t have any subs to shuffle!), and we rotated our injured players into (supposedly) less strenuous positions.  As an example, Anna took the place of Toni in goal, but the way she threw herself around the goal mouth, we could well have created more injuries than we remedied…  Luckily, our depleted side was bolstered by super-sub Shazza appearing early in the second half.  She successfully went on to fill a number of positions (including relieving Anna from her acrobatic dive-saving duties).

One more thing that must be acknowledged… Anita had conflicting priorities throughout the first half, and successfully demonstrated outstanding multi-tasking abilities by fielding urgent telephone calls (Buy, buy! Sell, sell!) while remaining solid in defence.  Her multi-functional sports bra proved its worth as a ro(bust) mobile phone holder.

By the way, it also shouldn’t be overlooked that we did actually score a goal (yay!).  Jo came back from honeymoon and wasted no time in converting a precision-perfect cross (but the offside whistle went, and we were denied).  We also had another sterling chance just before the half time whistle but Jules shot it straight at the keeper (derr!).  Other highlights include two fantastic ‘heart-in-mouth’ goal-line clearances from Meg and Anita.  Nice…

Half time – and it was only 2-0 – we thought we were still in with  a chance…  But somehow they managed to get 4 (that’s right – four) more goals in the second half.  Aaaargh!  The Waikanae Whippersnappers bombarded us with incessant runs into the box and dangerous crosses – it was not good.  The youngsters were fast, and with an average age of 15, we reflected on how the result might have been different if it were a drinking competition... ;-)

However, in the face of defeat, our defence was hardworking, with Kirsten leading a solid back four, and newcomer Linda definitely earning her player of the day title – she was all over the place, in the middle of most tackles, and made several solid clearances out of the box… good work.

That’s it for now – next week, we will return to the glory days of old (promise).

Julia Jones