L3s v Colchester 3s

After a cold and wet morning, the clouds broke and the sun shone for the main event of the weekend....Ipswich 3s v Colchester 3s.

Fresh off the back of a 4-1 victory the previous week and bolstered with some super star youngsters, the Ipswich side were in high spirits. This quickly changed when Logan, armed with her trusty iron, marched the more commitment phobic members of the team up to the clubhouse to put numbers on their shirts. The rest of the team wandered on to the pitch to complete a warm up best described as.....lacklustre.

The first half got off to a slow start, with Ipswich struggling to hold their structure and recreate the champagne hockey of the previous weekend. Colchester disrupted the defensive line by sending their forwards high, drawing players out of position. With the back line man marking, Loz and Harri put in a shift working the ball out of defence. There were occasions in the first half when the pace of Emma, Becki and Heather was unmanageable for the Colchester team. Unfortunately, too often, Ipswich gave the ball away cheaply and the players on the pitch could sense Langers rolling his eyes in frustration. About halfway through the first half Ipswich won a short corner....having seen SP seemingly unable to stop the ball during the “warm up”, no one was confident. A rapid pass from Stens coupled with a shout of “HIT IT” from Loz gave SP the time and confidence needed to ‘meg the keeper....apparently her only positive contribution to the game.

Half time came and Langers, seemingly unable to contain his fury, requested that Logan speak to the team while he tried some calming breathing techniques. The team talk, best summarised as “play better”, did some of the job Langers intended and the second half started with more positivity. Despite the dubious claims from the sideline that certain members of the team looked as though they might have been on the bottle the night before.

Ipswich started to pile on the pressure with wave after wave of attack leading to shots on goal..... mostly going wide. Emma made some mazy runs, and her skills and tenacity saw her awarded yet another MoM. Jock and Becki linked up well up front, leading to numerous chances. Ella played dangerous crosses in from the left. Finally Jane calmly slotted home a deflection from a short corner closely followed by Jeff adding the third goal, also from a short corner.

There was a potential opportunity to add a fourth late on, but when Ipswich were awarded a long corner after a Colchester player kicked the ball off the back line, SP asked the umpire in a very polite manner why it wasn't a short, causing him to overturn his decision to a 16. Due to the fact that neither Stens nor Logan fell over this week, this meant SP was handed DoD and match report responsibilities.

Despite having the most disappointed coach to ever gain 3 points, Ipswich 3s now have 9 points from 3 games putting us in 2nd place.

We go again next week in the big local derby vs IES 2s...