21st September 2008
Northampton Town FC 2 - 2 Radcliffe Olympic
Starting Line up:
Turner, Newton, Morton, Skinner, Adkin, Graves, Boott, Vitalie, Brewer, Dennis, Boddy.
Scorers: Emma Dennis and Charlotte Boot
1st Half - As this was our first game in the Combination reserve league, we weren't sure what to expect. The game got off to a flyer with Radcliffe dominating the play in patches, Northampton creating little chances, from a corner after 18 minutes Emma Dennis scored directly for her 1st goal of the season, 1-0 Radcliffe. After that is was very even with débutantes Natalie Vitalie, Deborah Skinner, Sophie Turner and Emma Dennis all making a good account for themselves. A shot 5 minutes later by stand in captain Chris Brewer went narrowly wide. Northampton went down the other end straight from the goal kick and where given a penalty for a challenge by Rachel Morton. Fortunately for us the Northampton player hit it straight at Sophie, justice done. 10 minutes after Charlotte Boott scored from approximately 28yrds with the ball bounce just right in front of her and going over to make the score 2-0 Radcliffe.
2nd Half - Northampton piled on the pressure in the 2nd half and Radcliffe had to weather the storm for the first 10 minutes. Soon after Northampton scored with a neat one/two taking the ball around Sophie in goal making the score 2-1. 10 minutes after that Northampton scored again beating the offside trap and curling a shot past Sophie, 2-2. Radcliffe went for the win in the last 5 minutes as a penalty was not award after a blatant hand ball in the Northampton box and Kate Boddy finally thought she'd scored as the ball looped over the keeper only for the keeper to fall into the goal clearing the ball away from goal in the process and the referee giving a free kick for a foul on the keeper, work that one out!
Managers Comment - Well what can I say, apart from I'm extremely proud of all 11 players today, they worked so hard and got a great result here against an experienced and well organised team. We showed a lot of passion as players where injured or tired due to the conditions after 30 minutes (Natalie Vitalie) but still kept going to the final whistle. It was a muggy day very hot and we had a lot of tired legs out there. I don't think we deserved to not go away from the game without a point to be honest, I thought 3 points could have been ours if we have had the goal awarded in the last minute and then the penalty claim was blatant, but to be fair the referee kept control of the game and we played some great football. Point well earned today, it'll make the other teams in our league pay more attention to us now as we're not just in this league to make up the numbers, we're here to win it!!!!
