Neill calls for big New Year effort from Carrick Ladies
Thursday, 5 January 2012
Carrick Ladies 1st XI captain Trish Neill is looking for a major effort from her team over January SA0118
CARRICK Ladies Hockey Club 1st XI, sponsored by Holmes Builders, will open their 2012 league programme with a 1.00pm home match this Saturday afternoon against Grosvenor.
When the two sides met earlier in the season at Grosvenor, Carrick very much dominated most of the match but ultimately had to settle for a disappointing 1-1 draw when the home side levelled in the last few minutes of the game. And with two more equally important games against Derg Valley and Raphoe also due to be played this month, Carrick's January programme is likely to play a defining role in the remainder of their season. Team captain Trish Neill explains. " Last season we entered the new year badly adrift in the Senior Two relegation zone while this year we're in sixth place and playing a lot better than we did last year. But our next three league matches could prove absolutely crucial as they're all against teams currently behind us in Senior Two. If we can win all three, we can not only pull further away from the teams below us, but possibly also edge up one or even two places in the league. On the other hand of course, if we don't do the business and bank at least six or seven points from the Grosvenor, Derg Valley, and Raphoe games, we could find ourselves looking over our shoulders again and that just doesn't bear thinking about. We had quite enough of that last season!"
“If we get it right during January," continued Trish, " I don't think we'll be too far off making ourselves absolutely safe for this season. Then we can concentrate on forcing ourselves further up the table. But we're certainly not there yet and the players have got to fully realise this and hit the ground running on Saturday. We simply can't afford any post-Christmas lethargy. None of these three games are likely to be in any way easy as both Grosvenor and Raphoe, who have to come to us, are currently fighting for Senior Two survival. So they'll most certainly be fired up for the occasion. We basically dropped points against both of them when we played them earlier in the season and we daren't do that again. On the overall balance of play we should have won both those games but we ended up drawing on both occasions due to lapses in concentration.
“And we have to travel to Derg Valley who are always extremely hard to beat on their own territory. We only just managed to beat them in Carrick back in October and we had to come from behind twice to win 3-2 with Lois Passmore scoring the winning goal with only minutes to go. There's no doubt we have the players and the ability to win all three of these games providing we're focused and fully prepared after the Christmas break. We've been playing well pre-Christmas and we just need to pick up where we left off. So I'm calling on all of my players to recognise the crucial importance of this month's matches and to set the ball rolling with a top class performance and a solid win on Saturday against Grosvenor. We can't settle for anything less," added Trish.
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