4th VII v Uppingham

Date: Saturday 13th March

Venue: Home - 2.30pm start

Team:

A Cartlidge
J Stewart
A Etherington
S Davies
S Griffiths
H Merritt
H Burn
G Fletcher

Result: Lost 17-26

Match Report:

It would be easy to view this result in a negative light; it was anything but. Uppingham had a strong, experienced side with two very tall shooters, who, ultimately, swung the game away from us. If anything, the 4ths have suffered from the fact that so few schools have been able to offer us a fixture: the one thing we lacked today was the confidence, which comes with playing together against successions of tidy sides, to take our time, knowing that we had the talent to give ourselves a platform from which to be enter the final quarter in a competitive position.
We started playing at a coruscating pace: Sophie Davies and Alex Cartlidge, the nearest living embodiments of der Wille zur Macht this correspondent has had the privilege to witness on a sports pitch, were stealing far more than their fair share of interceptions in the middle of the pitch, and Uppingham were clearly taken aback. Forces of nature that they are, they imposed their will on the game, and were ubiquitous presences on the court. The final ball into the Circle, however, was too often rushed, as we tried to force the game when, actually, it was within our reach all along. We made just enough mistakes to allow Uppingham to manoeuvre themselves into a solid lead, with their shooters converting 80% of their attacks, despite the classically orthodox reach and terrier-like screening of Hannahs Merritt and Burn respectively.
Alex, and the mercurial Amelia Etherington, the Matt Le Tissier of the team, repeatedly found enough space to hold a reasonably thorough seminar on dialectical materialism, but wisely chose instead to feed Georgia Fletcher, whose intuitive vision allowed her to ghost behind the Uppingham defence. She and Sophie Griffiths, at GS, have developed an excellent understanding, and come on hugely in their shooting this term; they once again made the most of their partnership as they found what little space the lofty Uppingham defence had not squeezed out.
At the start of the term we lost the middle two quarters against Trent pretty heavily, and simply did not have the self-belief, focus or desire to fight our way back in the game, but these hip young gunslingers have become an entirely different proposition. 15-8 down at half-time, lesser mortals would have let their heads drop, so it is to their immense credit that they won the third quarter 6-5, and were good value for it, too, immersing an appreciative crowd in the splendour of some very slick passing moves, scoring three unanswered points in the process.
Jess Stewart came on at GD in the final quarter, seemingly able to read the minds of the Uppingham Centre and WA, and epitomised the spirit and urgency of the team. Every girl can hold her head high: they have learnt to play as a team, seen what they are capable of individually, and done themselves, and the School, proud.