Things were looking ominous for Olympians on Saturday night when South United stunned them with three early unanswered goals.
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But, as stand-in coach Ian Woodley remarked, they “calmly went about their work” and fought back to trail 3-2 at half-time.
Kate Reynolds then tied up the scores as they procured a 3-all draw with the competition leaders.
“It was a calm, composed team effort,” Woodley said.
They even had the chance to snatch the points.
“In the last five minutes they had three good opportunities to win the game - they just couldn’t get the deflections in,” he said.
He said Dana Constable and Em Chaffey, who coach Andrew Farmilo had pushed back to defence last week, controlled things brilliantly at the back.
Isobel Hazell was also strong at right-half. Usually a striker, she added another dimension to the attack, while Flo Davidson and Holly Littlejohns “did a power of work” and distributed well and Gabby Hathway was a good target up front.
Isabella Bramley also scored her first first grade goal.
Souths coach Andrew Davy said after that initial burst his side didn’t continue to play the hockey that had got them into such a strong position.
“The first 15-20 we were pretty good, we moved the ball around, we used both sides of the field and we finished well,” he said.
He was happy to be three goals up in what he felt was a pretty tight contest, but what he attributed to a “a bit of a lapse in defence” saw Olympians score twice in the space of a couple of minutes and take the ascendancy into half-time.
“Part of the problem we experienced towards the end of the first half was we weren’t working back hard enough when we turned over possession,” Davy said.
They also didn’t get their press right, which was allowing Olympians easy passage out of defence with Constable and Chaffey “quite dominant”.
“Dana and Em were very clever in what they were doing,” Davy said.
Souths had a couple of good chances in the second half, and almost caught Olympians on the break as they pressed for an equaliser a couple of times, but a goal wasn’t forthcoming.
“The last 10 minutes we defended well but we were defending deep,” he said.
“We had 11 behind the ball at various stages and once we got a turnover we weren’t then able to move the ball into attack.”
Jodie Ellis finished with a double and scored a couple of nice goals, he said, Amber Witney picking up the other one.
Alice and Emily Bowler also as usual gave 100 per cent while Lucy Frame was good in the first 10-15 minutes. She probably went a little bit quiet after that.
It was the first game Davy had seen Souths play for a few weeks after coaching the Australian women’s 35s side to silver at the Masters World Cup.
“We were beaten 1-nil in the final by England,” he said.
“We’d lost to them in the rounds 2-1. They had a couple of ex-Olympians in their side.”
One was from Beijing and one London.
“They were a very slick team and had been working together for a while,” Davy said.
“We only assembled for the first time a week before our first game.”
He was very happy with how his side performed.
“It was pretty full-on. We played seven games in eight days,” he said.
It was his first gig coaching at that level but not his first taste of the World Cup.
“I’d been there a couple of times as a player,” he said.
