Buckingham 2 Leicester 2

Buckingham endured another frustrating day in the league on Saturday. Wanting to respond positively to the disappointing result from the week before and without co-captain Zoe Shipperley, away in Argentina on Great Britain duty, the home side started well. They had the better of the opening exchanges and were rewarded when they took the lead mid-way through the half. A perfectly executed penalty corner routine saw Abbie Brant send an unstoppable deflection into the roof of the net to make it 1-0. The home side doubled their lead just seven minutes later when a fine passing move involving Welsh international trio Danni Jordan, Phoebe Richards and Eloise Laity saw the later finish smartly from close range. Buckingham had a couple of further opportunities to extend their lead but were unable to do, so score remained 2-0 at half time.
Leicester came out strongly at the start of the second half and it took Buckingham a while to adjust to their more aggressive press. Eventually they began to play though it and created a number of opportunities to kill the game off. However, once again, the home sides execution in the final third was lacking. This came back to haunt Buckingham in the final stages, when a number of catastrophic defensive errors allowed the visitors to score two goals in the final three minutes, to rescue the game.

Overall it was a positive weekend with a point in the league and a quarter final berth. Saturday was good performance in so many ways, apart from the final few minutes, and whilst it was frustrating not to come away with all three points, with all teams above us also drawing, the result has not had as big an impact as it could have done. We have dropped to fifth but are still only five points off top spot, with a single point separating 5th to 3rd, and with all the teams around us still to play, we are still very much in control of our own destiny. This week we face a tough away fixture at bottom of the table Canterbury who are battling desperately for survival and drew with top of the table Surbiton last week, so we will continuing to work hard this week whilst taking nothing for granted.