Porlock Ladies 1 v 8 Ashton Ladies
Ashton Ladies travelled the 140 mile round trip to Porlock in what can be described as probably the most picturesque venue this season. Buried in the middle of a valley surrounded by hillside houses, the match was set on a heavy showery day in West Somerset and on a sticky pitch.
From the off, Porlock had the best of the exchanges and had an early chance shot wide of Keira Allans post. This kicked Ashton into life and a pinpoint cross/through ball from Mea Porter found the advancing Paige Ponsford who slotted away past the advancing keeper after 5 minutes. Ashton continued to push whilst Porlock also themselves created half chances but to no avail.
On the 15 minute mark, once again Mea Porter played the same ball to Paige Ponsford who won the sprint race to the ball and slid the ball under the advancing keeper for her 2nd of the match.
On the impressive Ponsford wasn’t done there and on the 25th minute completed a hat trick and put Ashton 3-0 ahead. And Paige wasn’t finished there as just after the half hour mark secure the 4th of the match running through on yet another quality ball from Mea Porter for Paige to make it 4-0 with a wicked deflection off the defender.
Porlock with a fine through ball found the striker in line with the Ashton backline and broke free to finish past keeper Keira Allan to give themselves a lifeline back in to the match.
Edyta Sawon came on for Teagan Ford and was straight into the mix after some nifty foot work from captain Rachel Pitts, fed the ball through to Sawon who scored to make it 5-1 just before the break.
H-T Porlock 1 – 5 Ashton Ladies
The second half started how the first half finished with player of the match Paige Ponsford finishing well into the top corner for her 5th of the match.
Porlock came out looking for their second goal of the match, and broke free down the right hand side, but with Liv Plummer cutting across field, push the player wide and cleared for a throw in down by the corner flag.
Ashton continued to push and from a resulting corner, the ball bounded around the edge of the area before Jazz Perrett took control and finished well in the bottom right hand corner of the goal.
Another Ashton corner seen the ball fed to Honey Ongley who with nifty football got in to the box but was shielded away by the Porlock defender. A lay off on the edge of the box to Lainey Bartley and a swift pivot, Lainey finished well to complete the scoring.
Steve Ponsford had this to say after the match, “really pleased with today performance from the whole squad. It allowed us to get minutes on the pitch for some players, and it will help us for the rest of the season”. Ponsford continued, “to score 8 goals after a long journey was very pleasing. We don’t have a match now for 2 weeks and I hope that won’t be too disruptive. We need to train hard and get ready for the next match and give a good account of ourselves in that game”.
