Result – 0-3 (loss)
Upminster began their season campaign on Saturday with a tentative start against a well organised Norwich City. Norwich started strong and passed the ball around well with Upminster battling for the ball to turnover in their favour.
The Upminster defence line up of Bella Boyle, Rebecca Pearson and Lauren Harvey managed to keep Norwich from the home D for a period but found it difficult to outlet with a hardworking Norwich front-line spoiling many attempts. On the first dangerous entry into the D, Norwich created their first short corner opportunity.
Norwich were initially disrupted by appearing to dummy their injection to cause the defensive line to break early. This resulted with the injector being penalised and sent back to the half way line. On the second attempt, the first shot on target was deflected across the face the goal and was scored from the far post to make it 1-0 to the away side.
Upminster attempted to bounce back and began to create more opportunities with short corners gained by some great play from Imogen Hodges and Alexa Marston. Gritty performances from Amy Byrne and Lucy Falzon prevented a lot of play coming through the midfield.
Norwich saw continuous threats moving forwards from Ellen Kozlowska, player of the match and debut game, and they began to increase the amount of pressure to any ball fed into her space. A loose pass was caught by the three Norwich forwards who very quickly created an overload on the defence and passed the ball around keeper Charlotte Triggs to gain their second goal.
The first half was finished with a controversial short corner as the first strike came in off target and above back board height. Norwich managed to grab a deflection which was saved by Boyle on the line, however as the whistle went in Upminster’s favour, Norwich spent much of half time disagreeing the decision with the umpires.
After shaking some of the nerves from the first half, Upminster came out fighting in the second half and created lots more opportunities and space moving forwards. Upminster began to connect well and hold the ball in phases which was led by defender of the match on also her debut game, Pearson, who managed her game really well and continuously frustrated Norwich to maintain possession.
Despite needing to feature more, Triggs continued to make brilliant save after save, including an outstanding tackle 1 v 1 on the D edge with her stick.
A string of 3 short corners were defended well by Norwich and supplied the last of the major threats from Upminster going forwards as Upminster went down to 10 players twice shortly afterwards. In an attempt to support the defensive efforts a free hit was encroached on early by Kerry Hodges and in combination with a stick tackle resulted in Hodges receiving a green card.
Norwich received their final goal of the game from a midline break, once again overloading the defence and a clinical deflection to finish. The game however still had a lot of life in it with play moving from end to end. In following a transferred ball from one side of the pitch to the other, Byrne enthusiastically sprinted for a final ditch attempt to break the Norwich defence but in doing so floored the Norwich defender and received the second green card of the game.
Upminster will bounce right back as they travel to newly promoted Letchworth HC next week to gain their first 3 points of the season.
