Barking & Dagenham 4-0 Woking

WITH THE SCORE AT 0-0 and twenty-two minutes remaining, St Peter’s striker Theresa Ezea was readied from the bench and sent on with the instruction to score a hat-trick and win the game for Barking & Dagenham in their final London Girls’ League Group A match against Woking. Ten minutes later, Barking & Dagenham were 4-0, with Jo Mecvari adding one for luck. Job done!

The visitors had arrived with a definite game-plan to halt the free-scoring hosts by defending the edge of their box and deploying pace amongst their rearguard to counteract the threat of Ezea, Aaliyah Felix, Simonette Johnson and Paloma Correia.

Dribble

And for a long time it worked.

Barking & Dagenham too often tried to dribble their way through the assembled ranks, only to find themselves running out of room or closed down at the crucial moment.

That is not to say there were no chances.

Early on, the excellent Whitney James, Mecvari and Felix combined down the right to slip in Ezea, who was closed down by two defenders when her shot was blocked in the box.

On seven minutes, Mecvari danced past three challenges before firing at the keeper from twenty yards.

Correia had the best opportunity of the half when Ezea powered into the box, with her blocked effort falling to the George Carey winger cutting in from the right. The attempt though was sliced wide.

And that was more or less it during a subdued first half where Barking & Dagenham took one touch too many or chose the wrong option whenever fortune seemed to present itself.

Quick passing would be the key, with measured through balls and play spread wide to break up their disciplined opposition’s low-block. There was no need to panic. This Barking & Dagenham team is packed with attacking talent and, sooner or later, the chances would come.

Improvement

Twenty-five seconds after the restart and the improvement was evident straight away. Skipper Felix – the brightest attacking spark in the first half – played a slide-rule pass behind the Woking back-line for Correia to race through, her early shot flashing across goal to safety.

Lily-Mae Fisher’s cross-shot then brought confusion from the opposite flank, almost creeping in as keeper and defender left it for each other under very little pressure at all.

And Mecvari came close to breaking the deadlock when Johnson exploited space behind with another of those through-balls that would prove crucial in the end.

The catalyst for victory though was undoubtedly the threat offered by Ezea after her reintroduction eight minutes into the half.

Almost straight away, Barking & Dagenham were ahead. The chance came from nothing, with a deflected loose ball falling straight into her path, twenty yards out in a central position. Two touches later and the keeper was picking the ball out of the net after a thunderous finish brought Ezea’s seventeenth of the season.

Hussle

It was then Ezea who began the move leading to Mecvari’s fine strike. Hussling and harrying, the leading scorer won possession and laid the ball back to Johnson. A flicked ball to Felix and the skipper again exploited the channel behind the Woking left side with a first time pass to Mecvari who demonstrated her power with another unstoppable blast.

At that point, the game was won.

But Ezea was far from finished. She had two more to get.

Johnson’s exquisite pass through the middle sent her school-mate off and running for a low finish to net her second.

And the third was a work all of her own, as Ezea charged down the ball from a goal-kick before cutting into space to wrap up the scoring.

It was an excellent response to Woking’s resilient challenge that certainly caused plenty of problems for the hosts and prompted much shuffling of the pack before the side settled into their task and wore the visitors down.

But is always looked like a question of ‘when’ rather than ‘if’ for a team that have dominated Group A, with five victories and thirty-one goals from their five games in the competition.

Objective Achieved

Victory secures first place and two wins carried forward to the next stage. Objective One for the half-term has been achieved.

A similar result next week will see Objective Two met too as Barking & Dagenham face Merton in the quarter-final of the Southern Counties Cup. A semi-final and final at Oxford City FC awaits the winner.

Barking & Dagenham: Grace Attwood-Adams (The Leys), Paloma Correia (George Carey), Theresa Ezea (St Peter’s), Aaliyah Felix (Goresbrook), Lily-Mae Fisher (Roding), Bella Hines (Richard Alibon), Lily Imititikua (St Peter’s), Whitney James (Rose Lane), Simonette Johnson (St Peter’s), Chelsea Marinova (Manor Primary), Bella Yorke (Northbury), Jo Mecvari (Southwood)