5 minutes of mayhem

For the second game in two days the team made the short trip to Uni Warwick on a freezing cold evening for a re-arranged fixture lost to the weather. This was always going to be a test facing a Uni side on home turf with a fresh team and a full bench but Sils did at least have the luxury of one sub this time.

The first few minutes were fine until the Uni forced a short corner and the deflected shot looped over everyone into the net which was the best start but the team re-grouped and started to put some passes together finding space down the flanks with the forwards pressing and harrowing the defenders allowing little time on the ball. Sils were now causing problems in the Warwick defence and Lauren pushing into the D rolled her defender and shot home at the far post for the equaliser. Relishing in their ability to battle hard Sils enjoyed some impressive periods of possession creating numerous chances and short corners but the inability to turn these into goals would come back to haunt them later.

The second half started in the dame vain as the first but the Warwick coaches had called for more intensity and energy and this was starting to pay off the culmination coming within minutes of the restart. The Uni were starting to cause problems in the Sils defence with their quick attacks and after over loading the defence manged to score this was quickly followed by a series of 3 short corners which were skilfully and quickly injected and moved around the D evading the defenders with goals coming before the rest of the team could get back to help out the beleaguered defence. Sils were naturally stunned and although the rest of the game saw no further goals Sils did create far more short corners than their opponents but the execution was not as forthcoming as their opponents and any shots that were got away prior to being charged down seemed to be straight down the middle of the goal and easily defended. Notwithstanding Warwick were still a threat and the defence played well to prevent any further goals being conceded but for 5 mad minute the score could have been oh so different. For some strange reason the execution of short corners which has been a mainstay in previous years seems to have eluded everyone at the moment but this will surely return once the tension relaxes.

There was a lot of had running off the ball and chasing shadows as Warwick moved the ball around but credit has to be given that no one gave up and the fast pace continued to the end in a hard game which with a little bit of good fortune the result could have been so different.