PENDLE Forest earned their first North Women’s League First Division victory of the season, beating bottom side Leeds Adel Carnegie 2-1 on Saturday.
Forest made a shaky start, with a few defensive errors putting themselves under unnecessary pressure. They soon recovered and started to apply pressure to Adel’s defence, resulting in a penalty corner. Catherine Waters slipped the ball to the right to Deb Bythell, who passed it back to Waters for her to slot the ball into the bottom corner.
Pendle continued to attack but couldn’t capitalise on a number of chances. In the second half Pendle maintained their attacking form, resulting in a second goal from a penalty corner scored by Karen Wignall after Waters saw her attempt saved.
Forest continued to press and player of the match Wignall carved herself a number of chances, which she couldn’t finish.
An ill-tempered Adel scored a consolation goal, with around 10 minutes left, and Forest keeper Laura Kendall make a good save from a deflection in the last two minutes to keep it at 2-1.
Pendle look to maintain this momentum when they play at home against Morpeth tomorrow.
Forest thirds struggled in their first match after the Christmas break against Lancaster thirds.
From the whistle Forest were chasing the game and couldn’t seem to settle against Lancaster, who passed the ball well making Forest work hard.
Midway through the first half Lancaster found their way through to the D, and despite Debs Lancaster in goal sliding out well, they managed to slip the ball into the net.
Forest seemed to settle after Lancaster scored and great work from the defenders, especially Izzy Hartley, prevented Lancaster from scoring again before half-time.
Forest made changes, the most notable being Mags Robinson moving into defence and Hartley moving into central midfield. This proved to be just what Forest needed, and for the first 20 minutes of the second half they commanded the game with Hartley giving an outstanding performance, well worthy of player of the match.
Forest had a number of chances through great work from Hartley, Abbie Hunter and Rosie Southworth, who all put balls into the D for Claire Birkett and Denise Tuck to latch onto. However, Lancaster’s keeper stopped everything that came at her and denied Forest a deserved goal despite four penalty corners.
Forest ran out of steam in the latter stages, allowing Lancaster to score twice more to make it a 3-0 win.