Report

Apologies for the lack of detail on this weeks match report. As mentioned below, the heavy rain that took place from half an hour before kick off, up until half time made it impossible to take any notes during the match, as everything was completely sodden.

After almost forty eight hours of solid rain, it came as something of a surprise to hear at 9am on the morning of the match that the game was definitely on.

The team coach had just made it onto the A12 at Chelmsford when Charlotte Hopwood made an early bid to look after the Meerkat all summer, by announcing that she had left her football boots in her car, back at the club. Once we had all stopped laughing, it was decided not to turn the coach around, as a spare pair of boots were found.

After two hours of making our way through the rain to Norwich, we were pleasantly surprised to find that the pitch, although soft, was perfectly playable. However, about half an hour before kick off, the rain started to come down heavily, and continued throughout the first half.

The first half began slowly in the driving rain, and although they had the better of the possession, Basildon found it hard to carve out any clear cut chances. However, it was Thorpe who opened the scoring with their first shot on goal after twenty six minutes, when a shot from the edge of the penalty area went into the top corner of the net.

Basildon responded and the Thorpe defence had to work hard to deny both Nicola Carty and Charlie Dolby as they looked for the equaliser. Thorpe then doubled their lead on thirty eight minutes, when their striker found space down the right hand channel and sent in a low angled shot into the bottom corner.

To everyone’s relief, the rain had stopped by the start of the second half. Basildon began the half well, and were enjoying the lions share of possession and territory, but were kept at bay by a hard working Thorpe defence. It didn’t look like it was going to be Basildon’s day, as Lucy Wyatt crashed a shot against the crossbar from the edge of the penalty area and shortly afterwards Claire Lacey headed a corner from Jenny Brown-Wealls against the post.

Charlie Dolby then found space on the left hand side, and sprinted into the Thorpe penalty area, where upon a Thorpe defender came across, and completely missed the ball and flattened her. Somewhat surprisingly, the referee decided that this was not a foul and let play continue.

Basildon finally pulled a goal back after sixty nine minutes when Claire Lacey headed in another Jenny Brown-Wealls corner. Basildon pushed forward, looking for the equaliser. But this was to leave them vulnerable to the counter attack, and on a couple of occasions a long ball out of the Basildon defence found the Thorpe forward in good positions, but her shots went wide of the post.

Carly Eagles and Jenny Brown-Wealls both saw shots drift wide from the edge of the penalty area and a shot from Nicola Carty was blocked on the six yard line by a Thorpe defender, who then managed to clear the danger before either Carty or Lucy Wyatt were able to reach the loose ball.

Four minutes from the end, another Thorpe counter attack saw a cross into the six yard box take a big deflection off of a Basildon defender, and into the net for the third Thorpe goal.