Kettering dig deep for the win.

Our last friendly was going to be a good test of Kettering's players, before the league starts next week, being against Towcester 1s who are in the league above us and our local rivals. Again like the other friendlies Kettering started on the front foot and quickly had all the possession in our opposition's half. We won a few attacking penalty corners, one of which was put away by Mandy Starsmore-Young after a bit of a scrap following the rebound off the keeper. Again, as we found last week, with all the attacking we did we were slightly unorganised in defence. A strong Towcester attack was finally put away following Kettering failing to take their chances to clear the ball. This seemed to spur us on though and we proceeded again to win more attacking penalty corners. A scramble at the right post on one of these corners was finally pushed home reverse stick by Harriet Goswell to put Kettering back in the lead. The second half was a different story. Lacking subs Kettering started to grow tired and we allowed Towcester to press us a little more. A man of the match performance by Toni Hustwait meant that even though Towcester had a lot of the pressure they had few chances on goal with Toni tracking back from midfield to cover the Towcester runners. However Kettering dug deep and held out. We still had some attacking play from our forwards linking up with our midfielders Meg Forader, Jess Austin and Cath Irvin who brought the ball out of defence well a number of times to take the pressure off. A good win to keep the momentum up as we head into our league games.