This season Radcliffe Olympic Ladies, were lucky enough to be involved for the third year running in the Nottinghamshire women's cup final, against Nottingham Forest Ladies. This game has so much history behind it, which of course only increases the emotion even more, ultimately making it more than just who wears the winner's medals at the end of the game.
The match was played Thursday 27th May, held at Basford UTD's ground. The weather was definitely on our side, maybe a little too much, this obviously then encouraged many local football fans to come down and support both teams and be entertained by a real local derby. Around 300 people attended, so you can imagine the atmosphere of the crowd in ratio with a small ground was pretty amazing, and a pleasure to be involved in.
The game itself, I must admit it was a tough one to play in due to the weather. For the first couple of minutes Forest dominated and tried to show us who was the dominant of this game, however, we, as we always do, took over control after around 20 minutes. Radcliffe were confident on the ball and always looked like we could score when in possession of the ball. However, in the first half we did lack quality on the finishing side, we could definitely of been 3/4 nill up by the time the half time whistle went. But luck wasn't on ourside and it remained 0-0 as we went in for a well deserved break and refreshments.
This is it now, 45 minutes to showcase all that we had worked for within the 2016/17 season, which like most teams, had been full of ups and downs. We came out, straight away taking possession and dominating the game, Forest quite evidently weren't able to play there usual game of football and began to get quite impatient, which of course played in our favour as this meant they were consistently hoofing the ball forward and not really creating any chances for themselves. We were creating chances after chances and both teams new there were only a few minutes left, and there were evidently going to be no goals in the 90 minutes, therefore both teams were preparing for a tiring extra half an hour worth of football!And then, the cruelty of a game of football struck. We dominanted the game from start to finish, creating numerous amounts of chances, the team in control, always. 90+3 minutes
, Nottingham Forest get a corner. Drilled in to the penalty area, and of course, you know what's coming, a forest player gets her head on the end of it, hits the bottom left side of the back of the net. Heartbreaking. Our heads went down for a split second as any teams would, then we rushed the ball back to the centre spot and tried so hard to get that last second equalisers. The dreaded final whistle was blown, and that was it, it wasn't meant to be. Football can be a very cruel game.
Even though the game didnt end up in our favour, after a few days of being able understand we did all we could and it just wasn't our day. The day was a pleasure to be involved in and it was a fantastic opportunity for Radcliffe Olympic to showcase what our team is about, even though we were the underdogs, every single person who attended that game, and I would say even the Nottingham Forest players would say we deserved to win that day.That's the way football goes sometimes, we have to dust ourselves off and prepare for the coming season and hopefully be back again next year to claim the title back.
Watch the highlights of the game here: https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=rDxYfKlfjQI
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