Hockey: Rochdale Ladies 2 - 3 Didsbury Northern Ladies

Perfect weather conditions on Saturday saw Rochdale Ladies succumb to a narrow defeat to Didsbury Northern Ladies.

Straight from the whistle Didsbury piled on the pressure.

It took Rochdale a good 10 minutes to get up to speed of the game.

Didsbury took advantage of this and opened the scoring some slick passing between their forward players and an easy shot on goal.

Rochdale had most of the possession for the next 15 minutes, but they just couldn’t convert their chances.

Pickering was working tirelessly on the wing and Hodcroft and McDonald were attacking well together. Knowles was also making plenty of attacking runs into the area, but nothing was falling for them.

In the final minutes of the first half, and completely against the run of play, Rochdale were caught off guard and Didsbury scored an easy goal to make it 2-0 at half time.

The half time break and substitutions lifted Rochdale and within minutes they were playing attacking hockey. Jinking runs by Collinson and Pickering saw the ball played through to Banks who stretched her legs and sprinted down the wing and into the area. She unselfishly passed the ball to Richardson who slotted home.

Didsbury continued to play good hockey, but Rochdale were now gaining more confidence. They piled on the pressure and equalised with a run into the D by Pickering and a strike which rather fortuitously hit the defender’s foot and looped up into the goal.

Rochdale attacked in the final 10 minutes but couldn’t get the ball past Didsbury’s goalkeeper.

One-minute left on the clock and Didsbury mustered one more attack. Pinging the ball around at the edge of the D they eventually hit it into the area and Didsbury’s left-wing pushed the ball towards the goal and into the corner, with what was the final touch of the game.

Rochdale captain, Knowles said “Myself and the team are gutted about this result. I thought the fight back we put in during the second half was brilliant absolutely brilliant, and we deserved a win today.

“We proved we are capable of playing some great attacking hockey. We have a double header this weekend, so we will dust ourselves off and hopefully get back to winning ways in the cup on Sunday.”

Player-of-the-match - Richardson