Rebekah Walker celebrates what proved to be the winning goal at Loughborough Students
England Hockey Investec North Conference
Loughborough Students 0 – 1 Beeston
Loughborough University, 5th November.
Beeston Ladies 1st XI were back to winning ways on Saturday with an excellent 1-0 victory away at Loughborough Students. After two games without a win in the league following such an excellent start, Beeston were keen to get back on track at Loughborough University but knew that they were going to face a tough test against a competitive student team.
The visitors were quickly into their stride in the game, and it wasn’t long before they were testing the impressive Laura Myers in the Loughborough goal. Beeston Captain, Sophie Robinson, worked the keeper on a couple of occasions before Rosy Stephens almost scored from close range. Beeston’s Argentinian import, Rosario Villagra, also came close with a couple of rebound attempts only for Myers to fly out and smother well.
With most of the possession and pressure, Beeston knew it was important to make that count in the first half, and their nerves were calmed when Rebekah Walker deftly turned home a cross from the right hand side, poking the ball underneath the despairing dive of Myers to give Beeston the lead.
Despite further opportunities to increase the lead, the scoreline remained at 1-0 into the interval with the only negative mark on the first half performance being an injury to Eloise Stenner which ruled her out of the remainder of the game.
The second half followed much a similar pattern to that of the first with Beeston exerting most of the pressure. Indeed the home side began to struggle under the regular assaults on their goal and at one stage were reduced to 9 players following a quick succession of cards. To their credit, Loughborough’s defence held firm and despite a flurry of penalty corner opportunities in the final part of the game, Beeston could not get the second goal to kill of the tie.
Loughborough goalkeeper, Laura Myers, was awarded ‘Player of the Match’ and that reflected how well she played to keep Beeston to just one goal. In the end, it did not matter, as the final whistle gave the Bees a crucial three points on the road, and a confidence boost ahead of their long trip to Bath in the Investec Cup the following day.
