Gillingham 1st 1 – 5 Wootton Bassett 1st

Wootton Bassett Ladies 1st team travelled a timely and scenic route in the early hours of Saturday morning to face Gillingham. Gillingham had got off to a good start in the league winning both of their opening matches so Bassett knew a win was needed to jump above them in the table.

The match got underway and within the first five minutes Bassett had taken the lead from a Katy Cox goal when she latched onto the end of a Kelly Lusted strike which was heading just wide of the post. Bassett held the majority of possession in the remainder of the first half and created many chances but were unfortunate not to capitalise on any.

After the half time break Bassett took a while to settle back into their rhythm, but once settled, Kelly Lusted got Bassett’s second goal after she neatly placed a shot into the bottom right hand corner to beat the Gillingham keeper. Gillingham reacted to the goal by piling copious amounts of pressure onto the Bassett defence and Bassett ended up giving away a few short corners, one of which Gillingham converted to make the score 1-2. Gillingham seemed spurred on by their goal and Bassett seemed rattled for a while but great defending by Zara Salisbury, Helen Wright, Tracy Fieldsend, Vic Sammon and Tegan Buchanan kept Bassett in the game.

With about ten minutes left Bassett seemed to raise their game again and won successive short corners; Captain Emma Collison got her first goal from a deflection off of a Suzanne Lello strike from one of the short corners. Shortly after, Lello received a great long ball just outside the Gillingham ‘D’ from Buchanan in defence which she laid off to Rebekah Taylor who managed to get a touch just inside the ‘D’ which wrong footed the keeper and ended up just inside the right post. With minutes to go Collison made a run down the right wing and crossed the ball to Taylor who got the shot away but Collison got the finishing touch on the line after the goalkeeper failed to clear it effectively. The final score was 1-5 and Lello was voted player of the match. Overall it was Bassett’s best performance of the season so far and hopefully they can continue their success next week at home against Wimbourne Wafarers.