Hotton Hotshots

Another injury hit the Hotton gals on Sunday so Sal needed to rest her broken finger ready for the cup draw against Rebels. A late afternoon scramble for players ensued and Bess was drafted in to help us out.....or was she?!? Lizzie was glad of the reminder that it was in fact Wednesday and yes, there was a netball game so the large glass of red was poured safely back into the bottle!



As always, pre match preparations involved a thorough warm up........well, we all rubbed our hands together to try and get warm whilst having a run down of recent events. Tonight’s noteable events included Emma’s wasted 4 hours at a speed awareness course, Sunday’s sterling performance by the famous 5, Fanny & Dick’s adventures in The Faraway Tree and let us not forget our attire for the evenings sporting fixture, in particular Debbie’s choice of bra! Unfortunately, Bess then texted to say she couldn’t actually play so we sweet talked the spritely centre from the previous game to come to our rescue.....and then there were 7.



So, the game against Physio Function (we will come onto their name a little later) commenced and we were soon down a couple of goals L. We were a bit slow out of the starting blocks and just didn’t get into the swing of things for the first 5 or so minutes. Before long though, the Hotton fighting spirit kicked in, Suze’s centres were working wonders and the Handley ladies were on cracking form popping balls into the net. Excellent defence by Lizzie and Emma troubled the opposition and we were back in touching distance at 11-8.



A quick break and we were into the 2nd half against Physical Function. Clearly unnerved by our form at the end of the 1st half, our opposition took to playground tactics of pushing, shoving and pulling hair (well, they didn’t literally pull anyone’s hair I’m sure they thought about it!!). WA broke the line so often that poor Cat was literally being pushed aside, GD started by shoving and elbowing Debbie at centres and moved onto even more rough tactics in the circle with Claire being the victim. Appearing rather put out that Claire declared her ‘just a bit rough’ GD then offered Claire outside after the match to sort things out.....being a polite Harrogate lady, Claire politely turned her down and explained that it’s only a game after all!!! Ha, ha, we avoided a 14 woman brawl, were down but by no means out and shall resume our fighting spirit when we next take to the court. There were some lovely moments of netball throughout the 2nd half and the final score was something like 28-20 in their favour L.



They say things come in 3’s so hopefully that’s our 3 losses out of the way! Looking on the bright site, we didn’t sustain any more injuries – well aside from Emma’s sliced finger, but if you will buy sharp knives....... and we tried to recruit Cat as a new player! Lizzie returned home with a damp fringe to re-pour that glass of wine and whilst we may all have a few bruises this morning, we’ll have them next time!



Ali