Considering this was only the second game for many of the girls playing 11 a-side on a full pitch, the final 1-1 score against a very well organised and strong Bishops Stortford team was a good result.

The first half saw Bishops Stortford generally in the ascendancy, with a gritty Hertford defensive effort from Maddie, Monique and Megan with Lulu calling out the orders from the position of sweeper. The defence held off many nice moves from the Stortford girls who moved the ball around well and had some real talent in their forwards and halves.

For much of the game, the girls struggled to repeat what we did so well vs Blueharts last week and distribute the ball around the whole pitch to get on the offense. Bishops Stortford worked well as a unit and made it hard for us to break out of defence, and link with the forward line. Thanks to numerous saves by Olivia from short corners and outfield attacks we went in 0-0 at half time.

Quite early in the second half we went 1-0 down to a quick move from the Bishops Stortford team. Thankfully this really put some urgency back into our hockey, we raised our game and hand the upper hand for the rest of the game. This resulted in a goal in the 47th minute from a strike by Molly Hobson ending up in the back of the net, met by a huge cheer from the Hertford supporters.

For the rest of the game the teams battled hard and were well matched, despite a number of possible attempts at both ends the resulted in a deserved 1-1 draw.

Well done to the whole squad for a real team effort, rotating well and putting in the hard work in such a warm day vs a very strong side.