Sunday 5th September
Chichester & Selsey 0-4 Ipswich Town
Ipswich Line Up –
Quantrill, Boswell, Peake, Lafayette, Hughes, Horwood, King, Peskett, Grey, Biggs, Thomas
Subs –
L Jackson, Egan, O’Brien, Barrett, Robertson
What a day for football! warm sunny day, a Bar inside and a hot food/drink stand outside. Even a couple of dogs come along!, they obviously heard Ipswich were in town!.
It was a slow start from Ipswich on their visit to the South Coast. Having the upper hand from the off, Town struggled to break down a resilient Chichester defence, despite Sophie Peskett’s creative flair causing havoc down the right side.
Ipswich did come close and, as the half went on, the closer they got to breaking the deadlock, but Chichester weren’t happy to just sit back. The West Sussex side hit Town on the counter a couple of times but failed to make their chances pay.
Anna Grey looked to have broke the deadlock midway through the first half when she was put through on goal and managed to nip past the keeper but was denied by the Linesman’s offside flag.
The partnership between Sophie Peskett and Maria Boswell down the right side of the pitch keeps getting stronger each game, and the pair teamed up well again. Creating opportunities and both players are capable of a wicked cross.
Second half, Town come out better and only took 3 minutes for them to finally make the breakthrough. Natasha Thomas picked up the ball on the right side of the box, lays it off for Sophie Peskett, whose cross finds the head of Maddie Biggs to give Town the lead. Biggs has been on fire so far and adds another goal to her tally.
A double change for Ipswich as Kyra Robertson and Lucy O’Brien replaced King and Biggs. King was carrying a Calf injury, so a wise choice to replace her once Town took the lead.
It wouldn’t be an Ipswich win without Natasha Thomas getting on the scoresheet. Throwing herself onto the end of a Horwood corner, and just beating the keeper to the ball to head in Ipswich’s second goal.
Zoe Barrett has impressed so far this season, and did the same again after replacing Anna Grey. Sophie Peskett weaved her way inside from the right side of the pitch, and placed a beautiful pass into Barrett, who touched the ball past her marker and slotted it past the oncoming keeper to make it 3-0.
Peskett completed her Hat-trick of assists when she skipped past the full back, who must have been sick of the sight of her by full time, pulled the ball into the centre of the area for Lucy O’Brien to tap home with the final kick of the game.
The Ups and Downs
Not really any downsides to this game, maybe my sunburnt arms?.
On the upside, a brilliant day out. Staff were great, food and drinks available for those making a long trip down south and, if I’m not mistaken, the best away following I’ve seen since the Norwich and Man City games. Town fans certainly fancied a day by the beach as they turned out a good numbers.
Maddie Biggs is scoring for fun right now also. I actually prefer the Biggs and Thomas combo up top instead of 1 striker. Hopefully we will see more of them going forward.
Summer Hughes starting at Left Back. Summer reminds me of the Duracell Bunny, she just keeps running and doesn’t seem to lose energy, it’s borderline cheating but I ain’t complaining!.
Player Of The Match
It seems to be an ongoing thing now, leaving the game split between two players for this. It was Boswell and Peskett this time around. Ultimately, Peskett had an unreal game and topped it off with three assists. Chichester’s Left Back spent the game just solely trying, but also failing, to stop Sophie. The only way she did manage to stop her was by giving away a free kick. There was a moment in the first half where Sophie was too honest because she was focused on putting in the cross. The Left Back kicked Peskett’s boot in the area, it was one of them where you could hear the contact and see he stumble, but she stayed on her feet to get the cross in, if she had hit the floor, it was a blatant penalty and would imagine the opposing player has her heart in her mouth when the contact was made. But overall, it’s easy to see why Sophie is considered one of the clubs most valuable players. She’s still young but her potential is incredibly high.
Officials
Personally, I though this ref had an alright game, especially compared to some we have had recently.
There was a fair few decisions for her to make as well with two flare-ups during the game that were quickly dealt with. It’s unusual to see, what we would call in the men’s game “hand bags”, in the women’s game, especially at this level. The ref dealt with most of the issues and the majority of her decisions were justified. What did let the officiating down though was the Linesman flagging against Town in the first half. Not only was he a bit of a jobsworth and getting above his station, but he also seemed to have his own ruling of flag timing.
There was two offside calls in the first half that I’ll use as an example. Anna Grey went through on goal, yes she was offside but the Linesman flagged about 4 seconds before she become part of the play. The second one come from a Town corner and to this moment, nobody knows who was actually offside but he flagged anyway. This time he flagged so late for the offside that apparently happened from the actual corner kick, that two Ipswich players managed to have shots on goal before he decided to raise his flag, so a good 10 seconds after the corner was actually taken. I reckon he was side tracked thinking about his Sunday Roast. Hopefully he sticks to being a linesman, otherwise we could be seeing second half penalties for first half fouls judging on his timing. Ref rating 7/10
