Maclean Women’s Premier Division team travelled to Bangalow to play a washed-out catch-up game under lights last Wednesday.

Everyone from players to coaching staff and supporters noticed a distinctive chill in the air. All of the game was played in single figure temperatures.

Maclean had a slow start to the game with Bangalow having the upper hand for about 20 minutes. Then Maclean started to get more drive from midfield with Noni Carroll leading the way. Bangalow also found out that Rachael Anderson and Emily Loy are difficult to keep out the game for too long and their link up play together is fantastic to watch.

Our first goal came from Caitlin Davies who turned on the corner of the penalty box and saw the keeper was off her line and calmly chipped the keeper to open the scoring. Bangalow responded and scored with a long range shot 2 minutes later to level the scores and that was how the first half concluded with scores level at 1-1.

Rachael Anderson was giving Bangalow defenders a torrid time as she continually drove around and through their defence and it was 4 minutes into the second half when she typically drove around defenders to shoot past a despairing keeper to give Maclean a 2-1 lead. Then Emily Loy, not to be outdone was ever present when the keeper made an error, and she coolly scored our third goal to give us a 3-1 lead with 25 minutes to play.

Bangalow, however, were still making forward runs and were difficult at times to contain and on 84 minutes they scored again to make the score 3-2. The following 6 minutes were frantic as Bangalow were camped in Maclean’s half for most of that time. Epic defending from Bec Teni and Jade Moffitt kept Bangalow at bay to give Maclean a 3-2 win and keep them top of the table.

It was a great team effort that is only enhanced by the introduction of two juniors; Olivia Stojko (check spelling please) and Molly Bennett who both played well in the highest division available to senior women players in this area.