Ladies 1’s Record 1st Win!

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Newmarket Ladies 3’s v Haverhill – 4 -0 win to Haverhill

With an impressive turn out of 15 players, a tough game faced the Newmarket ladies 3’s this Saturday who played against Haverhill. Although we arrived with sceptical minds, we started the game as a means to go on. With enthusiasm!

The first half of the game showed a 1-0 advantage to Haverhill. Without the strong defence we placed, it would of been a game with much different results!
With Jane and Janie taking half a match on the wing, Rachel in the centre with a war of her own to fight with their forward!! Jess pushing forward to intercept attempts into the ‘D’ and Phoebe constantly challenging the players along the left wing and applying pressure that caused panic each time!
Georgia was in goal, and despite the strong defence, a few breaks through saw 4 goals in. Spending half of the game on the floor planking for short corners after a record number were conceded, a lot of saves were made against skilled shots, by Georgia and the defensive team, impressing the opposition.

The midfield had their work cut out, Bronnie, Lydia, Bea and Vicky ploughing up and down the pitch with impressive stamina. Despite the result we kept a strong front and kept the standards and skills up throughout the game that we knew we had and could use against Haverhill to challenge their high level players.

Man of the match was awarded to Hannah Fox, for her strong running back to defence to help and back up the pitch with skills to charge into the opposition’s defence in attempt of a goal. Teddy went to Vicky for forgetting all of our training balls!

Overall, despite the 4-0 score line, all the ladies 3’s held their own and fought a strong game against a strong team. Onwards and upwards for the ladies 3’s who see themselves facing Ely 3’s at the weekend.

Norwich City 2’s v Newmarket Ladies 1’s: 1 – 0 to Newmarket

Finally Newmarket Ladies 1’s got off the mark against Norwich City 2’s and bagged 3 points to lift them out of the relegation zone.

Expecting a close game Town were missing a consistent side again for the match but knew they needed to utilize their strength on the ball and width play. City like Newmarket have had some high scoring defeats and also struggled to find the backboards.

The Norwich pitch – a recent addition to the site, was incredibly bouncy and carpet like and thankfully for Newmarket Norwich also found it tricky to handle. Newmarket having the opening push back worked hard at keeping possession. Exemplary ball control from April Atkinson, Faye Andreou and Claire McDonnell meant Town were holding their shape but struggling to find the final through balls.

Persistence paid off for Newmarket and they were winning the possession battle and driving towards goal – Angel Fayers and Loren Davenport combining well and finding striker Calli Cannon.

Jade Atkinson had little to do in goal and on occasions the ball came close she calmly kicked it to a supporting defender keeping up the flow of the game.

Newmarket were edging closer to scoring and after a solid move along the right flank April Atkinson and Davenport found McDonnell who unleashed a killer chip as soon as she hit the D leaving the keeper stranded giving Town their first goal of the season.

This galvanized Newmarket and they got stronger and stronger. Goal chances were relentless and Town were marking Norwich free hits superbly leaving them high and dry for passing options. Zoe Bailey and Gail Parkins were able to push up field to keep the pressure on and in fact Parkins came incredibly close to scoring after a goal mouth scramble but apparently the ball was not deemed to have crossed the line.

Player of the match Tania Fisher was always placed where she could intercept passes and supported her front runner brilliantly. Towards the end of the second half Newmarket surprisingly again looked the fitter team showing that this element of their training has paid off.

Newmarket look to use the victory as a confidence boost going into the home match against 4th place Panthers next weekend, 2pm start.
 

Newmarket Men’s 1’s v University of East Anglia 1’s: 3 – 1 win to UEA
On your marks, get set, bake… I mean PLAY!
This week was Newmarket’s 4th game in Division 3NE, looking to add to their promising 100% start to the season. Having recently witnessed Nancy Britwhistle’s Great British Bake Off success, spirits seemed high and the team looked well ‘blended’.
 
Right from the beginning, the visitors burst out of the blocks and saw their early endeavour rewarded, forcing goalkeeper Martin McCourt to get down low to his left to palm away a decent effort before conceding a short corner in the opening 2 minutes of the game, firing the away side ahead. 1-0 UEA.
 
The team seemed to ‘apple’ crumble, as UEA doubled their advantage through another short corner, putting Newmarket 2-0 down with only 10 minutes played.
 
Despite the early pressure, Newmarket did start to find their rhythm, tightening up at the back with veteran centre back Dave Worrall spreading the ball well to both full-backs Mark Pears and Darren Jenkins. Things did however threaten to boil over, and Umpire Freed was briefly prompted to halt the game, when UEA’s number ’93’ was fortunate to escape with only a telling off: first for a clumsy tackle on vice captain Josh Dawson, which saw several players rush over with handbags at the ready, and second for a late challenge on Chris Leggett, forcing him out for the remainder of the game with an ankle injury. Club officials are yet to confirm the extent of the injury.
 
As the second half got under way, Newmarket immediately started to grow in confidence, after Captain Griffiths’ inspiring half time ‘Steven Gerrard’esq’ team talk, with midfielders Josh Dawson, William Wilson and Michael Skelton finding gaps for Ed Griffiths, Harry Bell and Jordan Newnes to run onto and feeding the forwards with pin-point accuracy but only for their efforts to be warded off by the in-form UEA keeper. Strikers Matt Holden and James Atkinson were unfortunate not to add a goal or two to the scoreline, having made several intelligent runs into the D and applying constant pressure on their defence. The home side found themselves 3-0 down to UEA against the run of play, dancing the ball around Worrall and slotting pass McCourt to pour the ‘icing on the cake’.
 
Newmarket struck one back when Newnes ran onto a Wilson cross and saw his shot blocked by the opposition keeper. The ball ricocheted to Skelton, who drilled a ‘beautifully moist’ low first-time reverse shot down the middle of the D and underneath the keepers pads. 3-1. Thanks must go to Griffiths for his dummy in front of the goal, tactically restricting the keepers’ view. 
 
Next week sees Newmarket make the trip to King’s Lynn to take on Pelicans Hockey Club, looking to prove that this week was just simply a slightly ‘under-baked’ performance.

Dereham 3rd XI 2 Newmarket 2nd XI 4
 
With only Drew Wood and Matthew Holden missing Newmarket 2’s were as close to full strength as they have been this season and it showed in a commanding win over an experienced Dereham side.
 
Player Coach Andreou had spent Wednesday’s rain soaked training session working on defensive structure and short corner routines and both played a major part in this win.
 
After last weeks hammering by IES Town abandoned the experiment of Harrington in midfield and returned to a back four which included a starting role for Damo “Chopper” Rampowski. The additional solidity at the back gave the midfield of Andreou, Reed, Bunker and Wright the confidence to play slightly higher and within 20 minutes they had taken the game away from Dereham, cruising in to a 3 – 0 lead.
 
Andreou was instrumental. Although his personal goal drought continues his vision and passing continues to be one of Newmarket 2’s biggest threats. The other is Will Hoosegood. In Hoosegood Newmarket have a 30 goal a year striker; an old school centre forward who’s only desire is to hit the ball as hard as he possibly can at the opposition goal.
 
Rather than give too much away opposition scouts reading this report for insights into Towns play or structure I will simply say Hoosegood had 3 chances and Town found themselves 3 up. If you want to know how we did it get yourselves down to Newmarket sport centre at 3.30 next week and see for yourself. Hoosegood and Andreou will both be signing autographs after the game.
 
Dereham pulled a goal back in the opening minute of the second half but any fears of a comeback wilted as they failed to mount any prolonged threat on the Town goal.  
 
Reed restored Town’s 3 goal lead after excellent work from Oscar. The Newmarket youngster played in a wide attacking role, and like his footballing namesake looks like he has a bright future ahead of him in the English game. Having demonstrated his athleticism throughout he showed his determination and strength in a D crowded to create a chance which Reed gleefully slammed home.
 
Had it not been for Hoosegood’s 3 goals Dereham’s 2nd could well have been a contender for goal of the day, a flicked short corner which gave Seth Bailey no chance as it flew into the top corner.
 
This week former National League ‘keeper Chris Routs had taken Bailey for specialist coaching and the benefits were evident with his faultless positioning and commanding use of his D throughout being a feature whenever Dereham attacked.  
 
Special mention should also go to Jonny Bunker. Tall, slender and direct his wing play was a throw back to the days when Simon Gibson tormented teams up and down the eastern regions. If Bunker continues to develop at this rate Ed Griffith’s days in the 1st team may well be numbered………


Newmarket Ladies 2’s V Ely 2’s

Newmarket Ladies 2’s played in a local derby at home against Ely 2’s, Knowing they had to keep the pressure on to push for the top of the table position they started as they meant to go on by attacking Ely from the off by not letting them out of their own half.

Great team work with some brilliant passing between Anna Sambrook, Tracy Cockerill and Stef Howard kept Newmarket moving forward.  Despite the mounting pressure, Ely played well to keep the score at 0-0 at half time despite Newmarket having most of the play. Newmarket waited patiently for the first goal because the Ely keeper had other ideas and was saving everything. However Cassie Edgar-Ayms’ determination changed this when a strong sweeping shot found the back of the net.

Becca Bunning pushed everyone up from defense which increased the pressure on Ely who then gave away a short corner. This was injected to Lydia Evans who skillfully passed to Mel Podd who slipped the ball to Tracy Cockerill – she found herself in a great position to tap the ball in the goal.  The third goal from a well worked short corner came from an amazing Cassie Edgar-Ayms strike that found the corner of goal perfectly. Cassie was awarded player of the match.