Hockey: Urmston Ladies 0 - 5 Rochdale Ladies

Photo: Rachel Jackson

Dionne Collinson was named player of the match

This weekend Rochdale were away to play Urmston 2nds, where the sun was shining and they were raring to go and build on their recent progress and hopefully earn a win.

Despite not winning first push-back, Rochdale had no intention of letting anything deter them. They quickly regained control of the ball to drive play back into the midfield. Urmston defended well to make it difficult for them, but with the whole midfield working hard to retrieve any stray balls Rochdale were able to keep driving back into Urmston's side of the pitch. Their persistence finally paid off when McDonald took a long corner, Pickering received the ball at the top of the D and tapped it wide past the defender to Collinson, who slammed it into the net at the far post.

Urmston's best chance for a goal came in a string of short corners in their favour as they kept finding Brammer's foot each time she ran out to clear the ball. But Rochdale's defence kept their cool each time and the ball barely troubled Partington before Owen was finally able to clear it away.

Rochdale saw the rest of the first half out in much the same way, tracking up and down the pitch together to gift themselves opportunities and tracking back on the few runs Urmston managed to make towards their goal. They won a couple of short corners, pushing either Owen or Brammer up to help try and break down the Urmston defence, and each time they came close but didn't score another goal.

Shortly into the second half Leech intercepted the ball and handed it off to Knowles, who drove the ball up the pitch before passing it into the D where Collinson was able to run onto it. Urmston's keeper came out to block her, but Collinson headed sideways to avoid her before hitting it into the goal to increase Rochdale's lead.

Yet again Mongan and Yates proved a strong pairing on the left wing, with Yates hassling and chasing every ball that came her way and Mongan easily stopping those that snuck through to fire them back up the field. One of these, Yates passed sideways to Hodcroft, who then travelled the whole width of the pitch to evade the opposition players who tried to take her on, finally managing to dart into the D to take a shot only for a defender to deflect it out.

Later, after intercepting an Urmston free hit, Pickering drove the ball down the right wing before crossing it into the D before the opposition blocked her out. Collinson collected it and twisted as she swept the ball into the net to secure her hat-trick. Bolstered by the fact that they were finally seeing their team work and effort paying off, Rochdale weren't content to just run the clock down. They pushed high to further their lead. Collinson intercepted an Urmston pass and hustled it into the D to hand it off to Pickering, who almost got a shot off only to be blocked by a defender. Instead she passed it around them to Hodcroft who had run into space and was able to smack it into the goal.

Urmston were able to get a few brief forays into Rochdale's defence in the second half, but most of these were seen off long before they were in danger of the D. The closest was a pass into their D along the baseline that Partington watched drift over the baseline before it troubled her goal.

For the most part the battles for control of the ball happened in the midfield or Urmston's defence. Hodcroft, Leech and Pickering used their triangles to get around a couple of Urmston players in the midfield before Pickering got the ball again and ran down the wing before anyone could catch up to her, curling into the D before taking a hit that lifted just high enough to clear any sticks and found the far bottom corner of the goal.

When the final whistle went Rochdale were jubilant with both the result and the way every member of their squad had played. The final score was 5-0, with goal scorers Dionne Collinson (3), Gemma Hodcroft (1) and Roisin Pickering (1).

The player of the match was Dionne Collinson and umpire's player of the match was Roisin Pickering.

Captain Becky Knowles said: "What a game. Each and every one of our players put a shift in and we finally got a result we deserve. Training is definitely paying off, the level of skill today was superb.”

Rochdale's team for this week:
Keeper; Sam Partington
Defence; Kate Brammer, Nikki Mongan, Gill Owen & Hannah Palmer.
Midfield; Gemma Hodcroft, Paula McDonald, Roisin Pickering & Arabella Yates.
Forwards; Katie Burrell & Dionne Collinson.
Subsitutes; Becky Knowles and Kieran Leech.