PENDLE FOREST 1sts 3

DONCASTER 1sts 1

PENDLE Forest Firsts secured their first home win of the season in the Women’s Hockey League Conference North after beating table-topping Doncaster.

It has been a low-key start to the season for Forest so they were up against it facing in-form visitors.

As expected, Doncaster came out solid and quickly pushed up a midfielder to turn up the intensity.

They broke through stretching the Forest defence and slotted away the opening goal with ease.

After the first quarter, coach Ian Bythell changed the formation and Forest went on a full attack, culminating in Thea Cormack charging along the back line and pulling the ball back in for Liv Bythell to fire the ball past the goalkeeper to bring the scores level.

This seemed to deflate the opposition and Forest enjoyed a good spell of pressure.

Player-of-the-match Freya Bythell had a shot on goal finding its way past the defence with Dani Hornby poised at the left post to deflect the ball past the keeper from close range to give Forest a well-deserved lead.

They continued to dominate into the third quarter with Charlotte Hartley and Saskia Dodd hassling the Doncaster defence.

And after forcing a string of penalty corners, Freya Bythell’s drag-flick narrowly went of the top left-hand corner, while only some excellent saves by the Doncaster keeper kept them in the game at this point.

Although the opposition had tired considerably, the battle was still on and the Doncaster breakaways were always a threat.

But some fine tactical play by Cathy Kilgallon and Cormack saw them keep possession and they used the corners to hep run time down.

And in the closing stages, Forest made sure of victory when Hartley used her skill to fox the opposition and find a narrow gap between the keeper and post to seal a well-deserved 3-1 victory.

Pendle Forest Thirds took on their Lancaster counterparts and despite an impressive all-round team display, they slipped to a narrow 1-0 defeat.

Julie Finden, who directed play in midfield, was the standout player, while Autumn Crewe did well on on her debut.