Sirens B(eaten)

Report Author: Jess Grace

Game: Southampton Women vs Sirens B

Location: Winchester Sport & Leisure Park

Score: 6-9

Date: 16/10/23

There couldn’t have been a more perfect way to kick off the season than convoying up to Winchester. After everyone arrived in one piece (even Courteney who was sat behind Miss Nield and her long legs at the wheel), we piled onto poolside. Everybody completed the entire swim set at super speed without complaining (as always) then eyed up the competition whilst waiting for the public to let us into the big girl pool.

Lottie set the standard high with a beautiful goal just two minutes in. This led to a succession of goals at a rate of one minute by Katie, Rhia, Magill again, then Courteney and zero goals from the opposition! An absolutely brilliant way to show the Sirens our hard press that I’m sure will carry us through to #1 this season. This definitely shocked them into action as they stepped up their game and got three goals past Antonia in the first minute of the second quarter. This was soon forgotten by Antonia as they started holding off attack after attack without folding for the rest of the quarter. Many arc set ups were cut short by some sneaky intercepts from the white hats, Meg forgetting the rules of polo after a year out of the pool, and from Jess absolutely missing the entire goal! Clearly the lack of goals for us this quarter got to Lucia as she got a sent out for not taking the foul she just earned and instead just swimming along happily. I’m sure Lucia was happy to see Rosie Ramshaw bury the ball into the back of the net just a minute later. And if things couldn’t get any better for us, our captain (with just 5 seconds to spare until halftime) scored again, making the score 3-7 to us just in time for a little break for both teams.

Our president gave us some words of wisdom as well as Alex’s nonbiased opinion as ref, 7 of us jumped back into the pool to finish what we started. Quarter three saw the Sirens putting in a valiant effort to knock us down a few pegs, but nothing got past our goal line thanks to our tight defence. Our president took her own advice and made the score 3-8 with a gorgeous goal.

With just one quarter to go we didn’t want to let victory slip away so we dug deep and got ready for the last 7 minutes of the match. Almost immediately, Courteney showed the sirens we were all still on top form and scored for us again. Lottie wanted to close in her ratio of goals to exclusions so took a little vacation to the sin bin for being too handsy with the opposition. After this, the Sirens scored 3 more times even with our goalie saving shot after shot. Despite this last stroke of luck for the other team, we still finished on top 9 goals to 6!

Man of the Match: All of our silly little freshers for getting stuck in to their first match for SUWPC Women!

Dick of the Day: Meg for putting the ‘freeze’ in fight, flight, or freeze when set up for a shot xoxo

Names – Goals/ Majors:

Antonia Nield – 0/0

Olivia Jack – 0/0

Courteney Pienaar – 2/0

Katie Smith – 0/0

Rosie Ramshaw – 1/0

Rhia Perks – 1/0

Katie Magill – 3/0

Lucia Ciardo – 0/1

Jessica Grace – 0/0