Beccles 2 - 3 Thetford town 1s (09/11/24)

An abundance of players available this week meant Beccles were able to field a strong team and keep fresh legs on the pitch throughout the match. Captain Gemma had a plan and something a bit different to try in order to accommodate all available players and hopefully put us in a good position to do well in the match. With 5 ‘defenders’ and 5 ‘attackers’ and a lot of flexibility to support where needed, we seemed to get off to a good start. Beccles had plenty of opportunities on goal, as did Thetford, but both teams were struggling to land any goals. This was partly down to some excellent saves from Lorraine, including one magnificent diving stick save in the 12th minute which impressed both sides. Also, there was some brave defending of a lot of raised balls and hard strikes. Having 5 players back in defence made sure we were well covered for any Thetford attacks and allowed the Beccles midfielders to push up in attack to support the 2 forwards. At the half-time whistle, the score remained 0-0.

The second half was a completely different story. About 12 minutes into the second half, Ellie managed to get the first goal of the game which came after a few good Beccles attacks with attackers working well to find each other with passes and get the ball into the D. A bit of a scrap in front of the goal ended with Ellie slotting the ball into the corner just past the keeper. This started a flurry of goals and Thetford got one back almost immediately. But Beccles didn’t leave Thetford ahead for long. After a series of strong crosses into the D from Ruth, Marie and Debbie, Tarnya found herself with the ball, behind the keeper and tapped it safely in to the goal to gain the lead again for Beccles. In the last 10 minutes of the game, Thetford managed to gain a further 2 goals as their strong strikers finally got the edge over the Beccles defence and keeper. There were certainly some positives to take away from the game, but a shame the result didn’t go in favour of Beccles at the end.