The Womens Metro 2 team had a home game against 6th placed Footscray on Sunday & knew this was going to be a tough game as Footscray beat the top team Echo only the week before the break. Early in the game we had 80% of the play with most of it in our attacking 25, however for some reason there seemed to be a force field in the attacking D where no-one wanted to take a shot on goal. There would have been 8 potential scoring shots that were never taken and as is often the case Footscray got down our end once in the first 15 minutes & scored the first goal of the match. The rest of the first half was relatively even with both sides getting involved in the play but with our women failing to take advantage of our opportunities. Nicole & Loz ran themesleves ragged trying to get back in defence & Lou had some good runs through the centre and with some blistering shots coming from Nikki’s wing and good work from Meaghan in the circle, we should have scored. We went into half time a bit tired as we had no subs for the day & Footscray were using their two subs frequently in what became a full 60 minute running game between both sides. Missed opportunities was the theme for the first half.

Early in the second half Footscray got their second goal with a bit of a breakaway & not long after that we scored our first goal from Loz off a rebound from the goalie. Some great ground coverage from Corrine & solid defence from Jenny kept Foostcray out of the circle for the most part but when they got in there Alice in goals made some fantastic saves. Footscray however managed to get a third goal with 10 minutes left to go 3/1 up & it looked like we were going to lose a game we should have been winning. To the teams credit they never gave up & the last 7 minutes of the game were spent camped mostly in our attacking 25. We scored a second goal with 3 or 4 minutes to go due to work from the halves with Hannah, Cindy & Nicole all playing key roles to get the ball to our forwards. With a minute to go we were still 3/2 down and we got a short corner which was deflected in by loz off a Jenny hit to the post, & the final whistle blew as we were going back to the centre of the ground for the re-start.
We came away with a 3/3 draw but it seemed like a win as we looked out of it 2 goals down with 10 minutes to go. The effort the team made to keep going when they were obviously so worn out was absolutely outstanding and the reason this Southern team is hard to beat, they collectively have a huge ticker & never give up. Well done to everyone.