Laura Bridge - GB Superleague
The Great Britain Super League is a tournament made up of English, welsh and Scottish players, and this year consisted of the Caledonian Cougars, Celtic Panthers, Pennine Pumas and Saxon Tigers in both the women’s and the men’s competitions.
I was selected to play for the Pennine Pumas which was a team created to represent the England U21’s. The first weekend was staged at Cannock Hockey Club with the second weekend being held at Peffermill in Edinburgh. We played three pool games, one per day, with a match on the final day to determine the final positions.
The first and second placed teams after the pool stages will play off for the title, with the third and fourth placed teams playing in a consolation match for their final positions. Our first match was against the Caledonian Cougars, a match that we dominated from the beginning after taking an early lead from a well worked corner; however after this we weren’t able to capitalize on further chances to put away the game. The Cougars gained confidence in the second half and after a succession of penalty corners they managed to equalize. Fortunately our continued hard work paid off, and six minutes from time we scored the winner.
Our next two matches were against the Saxon Tigers (England A) and then the Celtic Panthers. The match vs. the Tigers proved to be a 10 goal thriller, unfortunately not in our favour. It was certainly a crowd pleaser with mid way through the first half the score being very even at 4-3. However their experience showed and they were able to penalise us further, making a final score of 7-3 to the Tigers. We entered our third match with the knowledge that the winners would secure a place against the Tigers in the final. Despite taking a 2-0 victory, our performance wasn’t great and we gave away cheap possession – something that we had to rectify in the final.
After an evening of video analysis and team meetings, we were prepared to take on the experienced Tigers yet again, and this time were not going to get beaten easily. The match didn’t start off well as we went one nil down, but through good defending we kept the score line to 1-0 at half time. Although in the 40th minute they increased their lead to 2-0. Our heads were held high, we continued to pressurise them and we gathered momentum, enabling us to equalise with two goals in quick succession. Nerves were high as we entered the final few minutes and we thought penalty flicks could be approaching, however after conceding a corner in the last minute we knew our chances of gold were lost when they deflected it past their keeper.
Although I was disappointed not to gain the gold medal, over the matches we fought hard and as a team there were definite signs of improvement which will be taken forward into our u21 programme. The superleague was a great opportunity to play against some of the best players in Britain, and we were proud to have competed well against some much older and more experienced sides.