The penultimate game day in the Irish Women’s Lacrosse League was held in UCD on the 7th March. The Avengers had a busy day playing three of the five games in the day. This meant that they had the opportunity to play each team in the league. The beautiful sunny weather and Pamela’s cookies made for a good day of lacrosse and had everyone in great spirits. The women came away with one win, one draw, and one loss over the day.
Dublin V UCD Blue
The first match of the day saw the Avengers take on UCD Blue. This was one of the closest matches in the league with both teams matching each other goal for goal. The UCD Blue team played a very tight defence not giving the Dublin girls much room to shoot, so dodging, cutting and rolling were the orders of the day.
The game went down to the wire, with Dublin leading by one goal in the last four minutes – four minutes being a lifetime in lacrosse. Unfortunately, Dublin lost possession with one minute to go allowing UCD Blue attacker Aoife “Billy” O’Shea to score in the last second of the game. This lead to a draw between both teams with one game left to play. It’s all about the pride.
While we were all disappointed and frustrated to come away with a draw, it was a brilliant match where the Dublin girls showed real fight and determination to win. Our defence in particular was fantastic and made it nearly impossible for UCD Blue to move the ball on attack.
Aisling made such a big impact on attack working really hard on being the help pass and always encouraging and praising the team. Goals were scored by Anna Bischoff (2), Aisling Casey (1), Aoife Ferguson (1), and Evanna Murphy (1). Kate Gaitley had another fantastic game in goals for the Avengers.
Dublin V Galway
The second match for the Dublin women was against rivals Galway. This was the last match we will play against Galway in the league and look forward to playing with them in the final fun match of the league on 11th April.
Galway played incredibly well all weekend. Unfortunately, they brought Lindsay with them this weekend who is fantastic at the fast breaks. Teamed up with Alex they can be a very difficult pair to keep away from the goal and are a force to be reckoned with! Anna was on a roll from dominating on the draw, to ground ball pick-ups to attacking and re-defending.
Unfortunately our shooting really let us down in this game with Aoife Ferguson and Anna Bischoff were the only two players to successfully score a goal each. The women had to do team push-ups punishment for every shot that hit the goalie. Erin Woods stepped into goals again for Dublin and was a brilliant addition to the defence.
Dublin V UCD White
As usual, it was great to play against UCD White and see how they have improved throughout the season.
This match is always a great opportunity for Dublin to try out new plays and positions. Two of our defenders even managed to score goals (Laura & Rebecca) with Susan nearly making it three for three but changed her mind last second and passed the ball to another teammate. While Susan mightn’t have added any points to our score, she continued to shine on defence and denied any UCD White players entry to our defence side of the pitch.
Goals were scored by Pamela Lowenstein Cranford (4), Aisling Casey (3), Anna Bischoff (3), Evanna Murphy (3), Kate Gaitley (2), Erin Woods (1), Laura O’Flynn (1), and Rebecca Headon (1). Aoife Ferguson made her goalie debut but defence was too strong to allow the ball near her to take any shots!
Player of the Game Day
The player of the game day, as always, was voted by her teammates. The winner of this Game Day is…. Rebecca Headon! Rebecca is one of the original Dublin players and has also been on the Ireland team since 2008. She will compete in the European Championships in August this year. While Rebecca is a strong individual player, she is a fantastic leader on the pitch and is constantly encouraging and helping the other players to improve. She runs the defence at every match and has a great impact on people’s spirits in the game. Also, she is the team’s personal doctor and was a huge help on Saturday when Fred (UCD) became unwell and needed medical care. Thank you Rebecca, and Fred we all hope you are ok now!
Here are some of the comments her team mates had to say:
‘Worked well together on defence (as always) and scored an impressive goal!’
“Central player in defence, encouraging defence to improve. Her medical knowledge is also extremely useful!”
‘She was amazing at D!’
“She showed great determination when she fell over but continued to fight for the ball!”
[tb_results comp=”28″ season=”30″ venue=”27″ linktext=”View all results” title=”Results”]
