BNU women's B 3-1 Loss to Petone Pulse

The Sunday morning early game proved a bit much for what can only be described as an unlucky game :( BNU women's B started strong  with a load of shots on goal and some really great team work dominating the possession in the first 20 minutes.  Petone started a player short but soon picked up the pace with some higher grade recruits.  BNU had all the opportunities in the first half with all shots at goal ending up near misses and a dedicated Petone goalie getting down and dirty to stop the goals.  There was even a fumbled ball from the goalie which could of (should of) ended up a goal but with a lot of slipping and sliding and Petone defence backing up their goalie, it wasn't to be.

There were some great crosses from Wendy and Jo which could of ended up goals if we had of had the support on the far post to finish it off.  Aphra once again did a lot of running and came close with a number of shots on goal.  Then in the final minutes of the first half Petone got us on the counter attack, bugger....  so the half time score was 1-0.

Petone must of talked about the counter attack at half time because they sure went to town with it in the second half... BNU were playing some great football but just not seeing the results.  Then not long in to the second half Aphra finally got there with the equaliser goal!!! YAY finally!!! Then Petone switched on and came back at us every time with the counter attack which took advantage of our great defence work to push up and left the space for the fast paced strikers to run in to and take our goalie Toni on one on one in a number of cases... there were a number of off sides that went undetected by the somewhat biased ref but that's another story... this allowed Petone to gain another goal which was followed in quick succession by another and left BNU fighting to claw back from 2 goals down.  This was a hard task given the tiring bodies and the muddy field and while we didn't make the come back that was required at least we didn't let any more goals in...

In all fairness Petone had some good players (particularly their number 10) who delivered the ball well and created the opportunities they needed to take the lead.  BNU felt the loss at full time with some tired bodies and a sense of being ripped off after playing well but not being reflected in the final score!!! damn it... There were a few injuries with Sharon coming off in the second half and Wendy taking a big hit from a Petone player which she managed to run off.

Some other highlights from our game were:

• Kirstin's great direction on the field
• Great accurate passing round players to get the ball through the mid field
• Anna's boot
• Some great running from strikers Catherine, Jo, Aphra, and Bex, and from the wings with Wendy, Jenny and Meg all getting in there

I guess to sum it all up - "Soccer was the winner on the day"