20th February 2012
Two wins out of two for EHL clubs
Bath Buccs 0, Swansea 1
Swansea continued to put the pressure on leaders Buckingham with a Carys Hopkins goal after 26' making the difference in their away fixture at bottom club Bath Buccs. Buckingham, who did not have a fixture over the weekend, now lead Swansea by just 1 point with a game in hand.
University of Birmingham 2, Cardiff & UWC 3
Cardiff & UWIC gained the impressive scalp of 2nd placed Birmingham University with a gritty determined performance from the first to the last whistle. The result was achieved despite never really get in to any fluency in their style of play.
Indeed it was the general poor execution of basic skills by the Cardiff team which forced coach Abdo to alter his initial game plan. It came as no surprise that Birmingham took a 1 – 0 first half lead to the break from a well executed short corner whilst Cardiff spurned a great chance from one of their own short corners. There followed an “agitated” half time talk from the coach!
A distinct improvement occurred from the start of the second half with pressure being applied across the board on the students. Forward Luke Hawker closed down the Birmingham defence deep in their circle and the ball popped up to Liam Brignull who calmly slotted it home. The students began to panic and lose their discipline with a succession of yellow cards throughout the second half. At long last in the 64' minute Cardiff scored from a short corner converted from second phase again by Liam Brignull. Disappointingly the lead was held for exactly 1 minute. Cardiff goalkeeper stepped forward to make a number of key interventions and the game seemed to petering out to a draw.
However defender Henry Eriksson had other ideas and surged up the centre of the pitch to fire a brilliant pass directly through to the unmarked Steffan Ray-Hills who slickly deflected the ball home to silence the large Birmingham support. The final whistle was blown before the restart.
Cardiff will have to step up their levels if they are to beat their local rivals Whitchurch on Thursday evening (20:00 start) at the NHC in the rearranged EHL match.
