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Columbus Jillaroos victory over the Toronto Central Blues
By Aron Tharp | Aug 6th, 2011
It started out as an overcast morning with a few showers. As the Jillaroos arrived to the field, the Toronto Central Blues men’s team was just wrapping up their 2nd game against the Toronto Eagles.
Today was the inaugural day of the brand new Jills jerseys. As each girl excitedly pulled out her jersey and tried it on, the Lady Central Blues started to come out of the crowd and remark how impressed they were with the Jills’ new jerseys. One girl even said she wanted to move to Columbus just to get her own!
As the Jills started warming up, the clouds dissipated and the sun began to beat down; it quickly became a hot and humid day as the girls took the pitch. The Jills traveled strong and had 6 girls as well as both coaches, two Jacks, and four parents as fans. Toronto also had six girls for the game as several of their players are in Australia for the International Cup. The starting lineup for today as chosen by coach Scott “Scoota” Matheson was Stephanie “Macca” McKitrick at full-back, Erin Voden at half-back, Kristi “Kujo” Baldwin at Ruck, Sarah “Soup” Plummer at rover, Sara “Mouth” Matheson at half-forward and Jamie Dailey at full-forward. The ladies would play four ten-minute quarters since neither team had an interchange and the humidity level was high. One of the Lady Blues even sarcastically remarked that ‘their igloos melted earlier that day’.
1st Quarter
Once the umpire blew the whistle of the first Jillaroos game of the year, the Jills were immediately given a big wakeup call as a Lady Blue put it through the uprights making the score 1.0.1 0.0.0 with the Jills down. The Jills weren’t shaken and quickly retook the field with confidence. Mouth was reaching down for the ball near her own goal and was hit hard in the back by a Blue giving her a free kick near her distance. She decided instead of testing her boot to put it down in front of the goal for Jamie to go for which she was able to convert to a behind. The Jills kept fighting and within minutes were ahead 1.1.7 to 1.4.10 thanks to a huge boot from Soup midfield for a goal. Shortly before the goal, a Lady Blue was unfortunate to be between big hitters Mouth and Jamie and was hit hard and had to be carried off the field. As a sign of her true toughness she would return to the field and play hard. As the quarter was coming to a close, the Jills started creeping up towards their own goal and were caught unaware when a big boot from a Blues midfielder put the ball less than 2 feet in front of the Jills goal. A huge sprint from Macca to catch up to the Blues forward resulted in a great tackle as soon as the Blue picked it up resulting in a kick to the Jills and no points for the Blues. The score at the end of the quarter was the Blues 1.1.7 Jills 1.8.14.
2nd Quarter
The Jills retook the field with the lead and were quickly run on hard as the Blues ruck set up her midfielder for a big boot but with the wind wasn’t able to convert for a goal. The Jills quickly regained dominance on the field and kept the footy down in their offensive side for most the quarter. Going tough at the pill all day was Erin who came up with a big kicking in danger call and had herself set up for a nice goal attempt but being just near her reach and out of breath from her great play so far pulled her shot and converted a behind making the score 1.1.7 1.9.15. With less than 4 minutes left in the quarter the boots would come alive as goals from Soup and Mouth (twice) would give the Jills a big lead going into the half Blues 2.1.13 Jills 4.10.34.
3rd Quarter
A halftime adjustment by Scoota would put Erin over to wing and left Macca as the sole defensemen. The umpire, after playing in Toronto’s men’s game earlier that day opted to sit the rest of the day and handed his whistle over to Jackaroo Brad Dailey for the remainder of the game (despite a disclaimer by the other 3 Jackaroos at the field). The 3rd quarter started off very quietly for both sides as no points were scored in the first 4 minutes of the quarter. The Jills would come alive for the rest of the quarter with another huge goal from midfield from Soup. On the following tip Kujo put the ball on the ground right in front of Soup and she made a great scoop and dodged a tackle putting the pill back through the center posts putting the Jills up 2.1.13 6.11.47. The score at the end of the quarter was 3.2.20 to 6.14.50.
4th Quarter
Despite questions being asked about the officiating by many of the Toronto men on the sidelines, Brad Dailey returned to the field with his whistle for the 4th quarter. Erin began the 4th quarter in the midfield which promptly proved to be a great coaching decision. On the first tap Kujo put it right into Erin’s hands who passed it back to Kujo who put a big kick down to the forward line for a mark by a wide open Jamie. After a long game Jamie just wasn’t quite able to convert the mark into a goal from over 20 meters. The teams then quickly exchanged goals with Mouth connecting for yet another goal. Play quickly got scrappy as girls were fighting tooth and nail for the ball and throwing each other around yet the ref just couldn’t find it in himself to bring that whistle into play. Finally, after one of the Blues got her arm hung around Mouth’s neck a penalty was called and Mouth was set up for yet another goal attempt. The shot was perfectly lined up yet she decided to catch the Blues unaware and surprise everyone by playing on and running 15 meters to the side before making an off balance kick and scoring her 4th goal for the day. With 20 seconds left Soup grabbed the ball in the defensive side of the field and looked up and saw the goal wide open. She immediately took off and ran up the middle of the field, bouncing the ball more than once. With 5 seconds left, under pressure from one of the Lady Blues, Soup put it on her boot and just barely missed another goal by scoring the 17th behind for the Jills.
Final
Blues 4.2.26 Jills 8.17.65
Goals: Soup 4, Mouth 4
Behinds: Soup 9, Mouth 4, Jamie 2, Erin 1, Kujo 1
Notable: In the 3rd quarter of the game Soup would collide with one of the Lady Blues and crash full speed into one of the goal post harming both herself and the pole. In the 4th quarter she would exact her revenge when she attempted a kick out of her own goal and, hitting it off the side of her foot, sent the ball straight into the top of the goal post knocking the post down and stopping the game.