Instructions from coaches Vulture and Doug were clear from the start; play down the right side and avoid the opponents fore stick, a now familiar mantra. This strategy served us well last weekend and having tasted victory then, the Enchiladas were hungry for more. Fired up from the start we scored within the first 5 minutes with a strong push into the goal from Jaclyn. Possession for the rest of the first quarter was mixed from then on with both teams playing well, but with slightly more play in the Sirius half. They were relying on long passes but our improved press meant our midfield was able to intercept before the ball reached our quarter. Emma in right defence once again did a great job of intercepting and passing to Ivy in the midfield, who then either passed forward or drove into the D providing several unfulfilled opportunities for us to secure our advantage.

In the second quarter we continued to look strong in defence and repeated our attacks down the right side, but were down to 3 subs from our original 5 after Sam pulled a muscle and Michelle began to feel unwell. The remaining subs allowed us to keep rotating, helping to maintain our energy levels as the game progressed. Our attempts on goal continued to be thwarted, despite strong passes from Carla into the D, but at the same time the Enchiladas defence continued to rebuff our opponents attempts on our goal. Our persistence seemed to pay off with what we thought was a fair goal, but the decidedly dodgy umpires deemed it a high ball despite protests from our awesome coaches. Nevertheless, we had forced Sirius to play more defensively and they were becoming frustrated by our success in shutting down their long passes as we headed towards the end of the third quarter holding our 1-0 lead.

Moving into the final quarter, we knew that we would have to work hard and dig deep to fight our Q4 fatigue and hold our lead. We continued to recover quickly from losing possession, but were also fouling more and found ourselves defending a short corner. We lost sight of our right hand attack strategy and a second foot penalty in our D gave another short corner to Sirius providing them with an equaliser. We were not about to let go of our chance of another win easily though, having dominated for most of the match, and the entire Enchilada posse pulled together to create as many chances on goal as we could in the remaining time. Carla resorted to long passes into the D clearing the ball through the left mid and with one minute left we won a final short corner. With tensions running high, sadly we were unable to get the finish we wanted.

With another strong performance though, the Enchiladas can hold their heads high knowing that they held to a draw the team currently sitting second in our league!