With Anna Kauffmann, Giulia Clini and Ale Fairn unavailable, Teddington’s coaches were down to 13 but still had to make tough decisions: with so many squad members capable of playing in so many positions. In the end, captain Carla Novakovic slotted into right-back, with Amy Hallett back in her deep midfield role. Emily Coulson slipped inside to replace Giulia, with Emily Bashford’s ever-increasing confidence allowing her to start a game for the first time since March.
Maidenhead, second in the league having beaten everybody but Wimbledon, started the stronger, breaking the offside trap twice in the first five minutes. In the first instance Saskia Brewster – playing despite ongoing ankle trouble, which will hopefully heal over the coming fortnight sprinted back superbly to dispossess the striker. In the second, Ruby Rudkin slipped but recovered, sprang up and did enough to terrify the striker into insignificance.
If Ruby was literally “up and at ‘em” at the back, so was Ella Dodd up the sharp end. Maidenhead were playing a back three built around Zuri, the tall accomplished centre-back who usually looks so accomplished on the ball – but from a goal-kick Doddsy closed her down, dispossessed her, broke into the right-hand side of the area and smashed it high past the advancing goalkeeper. Seven minutes gone, 1-0.
Doddsy’s dogged front-running was pulling the Maidenhead trio hither and yon, giving her team-mates good options. When Bash got the ball on halfway, she had the awareness to spot Doddsy’s diagonal run, the confidence to calculate the pass and the ability to complete it.
Still the visitors threatened the breakthrough. Happy to pass around in clever midfield triangles but always seeking the chance to get in behind, they had Ruby haring out to the edge of her area, then pushing wide a 20-yard snapshot. The goalkeeper who had looked somewhat ill before the game now looked more at ease and in her element.
In the 19th minute a superb corner at the second attempt from Ella Bothamley – frustratedly peripheral thus far – almost fell for Doddsy on the six-yard line. Maidenhead countered but Amy zoomed brilliantly across, showing awareness, pace and strength to close down the problem, find a team-mate and launch a counter-counter as Boz flew down the right and set up Doddsy for another shot saved.
Amy’s interception typified Teddington’s first half. Maidenhead may have had more of the ball but the home side were constantly disrupting their midfield triangles. Not only were Amy and Liz Kriebel diligently digging in, but Bash and Boz were tracking their wingbacks, while Emily was also working back from the front of the central triumvirate. The end result was that Teddington effectively had five across midfield, matching Maidenhead’s 3-5-2 and leaving the home side with two spare players.
Knowing that the ball can move faster than the player, the visitors insistently tested Teddington’s high line with through-balls, which usually resulted in correct offside calls as a well-drilled offside trap worked on several occasions. Then, in the 34th minute, it suddenly didn’t.
One of Teddington’s most reliable players, Saskia had been as efficient as ever, and had dropped back five yards to cover Millie MacEacharn – who had just come on for a well-deserved run-out while Bash had an equally well-deserved break. Trouble is, she was still five yards behind her team-mates as the latest Maidenhead through-ball whizzed past, allowing the striker to poke past Ruby. Chalk that one up to a lack of awareness and communication among Teddington’s still-quiet defence.
On the balance of play, Maidenhead may have deserved an equaliser but the home side didn’t buckle… yet. Three minutes after the goal, an Emily snapshot from 25 yards slipped through the goalkeeper’s sodden gloves but not quite over the line. Then Boz drove down the right and won a corner, which she put onto Em’s boot for a tucked six-yard volley almost identical to the one at Wimbledon the previous week.
So Teddington were back in front, and with the wind in their favour in the second half, although they were warned that Maidenhead’s balls over the top might therefore hold up obligingly for the visitors. As it turned out, that wasn’t the main threat Teddington faced in the second period; of the five goals Maidenhead would score, only one was from a through-ball, and not particularly lengthy at that. The visitors discovered that they didn’t need to bypass a defensive unit they could simply amble through.
The first goal came after five minutes, with Teddington caught in possession in defensive midfield. The second came five minutes later, when a ball in from the right bobbled past several static home players to a much livelier striker who finished past Ruby with the outside of her right foot. The third was another simple through-ball past a Teddington team by now resembling a Greek pantheon of statues. The fourth was a penalty after Carla, under pressure from her own team’s goal-kick, was adjudged to have fouled the attacker in the area.
Teddington had collapsed like a cheap deckchair, conceding four in 12 minutes to a merry Maidenhead team who couldn’t quite believe the extent to which their opponents had simply melted away.
At 5-2 up, the visitors eased off somewhat, and so did the rain. Boz came back on for Sadie, who had replaced her at half-time but struggled with a combination of illness and disappearing team-mates. Macca, too, made way for Bash while not quite believing what had happened while she was out there. It can’t all be Jelly’s fault for turning up when the team was winning 2-1.
With six minutes to go, Teddington pulled a goal back when Boz hammered a fierce right-footer into top corner from an acute angle. It had come about by pressing hard and high then finding each other well – Em, Liz and Boz linking well and working the triangles.
It made the scoreline look a little less ugly and could have been the springboard for a spirited comeback, but three minutes later it was 6-3 as Maidenhead simply ambled through the defence. The right-sider walked – not danced, not sprinted – past four or five half-hearted attempts at tackles before finding the striker to plant past Ruby.
And so Teddington equalled their own record for the heaviest concession in the team’s history, equalling the half-dozen shipped to AFC Wimbledon back in their first season and Abbey on the opening day of 2015/16. It could have been worse: on separate occasions, Sas and Carla had each darted around the back of their defensive partners to eventually snuff out dangerous runs from the visitors, while Ruby had pulled off a couple of second-half saves.
Maidenhead are a decent team, a nice bunch of girls managed by a good man, but they’re far from world-beaters: there’s no specific player to fear, or undefendable pattern of play. After being largely closed out in the first half, they were notably stronger after the break: Pat had them in for two months of preseason training, and their superior fitness told in the second half as they eased past a heavy-legged home team – several of whom didn’t look like they had done much about their manager’s pleas to work on their endurance over summer by going on regular runs.
Fitness might have helped, but so might mental strength. There was much post-match talk among the coaches of formations and personnel, but while Player X might have done better in Position Y, no starting tactic or star-studded squad could possibly matter when players are allowed to walk through five or six static players – and then allowed to do it again, lesson unlearned.
Teddington have come a long way, and are playing arguably their best attacking football despite having lost two of their all-time top goalscorers. But all that can be undermined by a lack of discipline and desire among the defensive unit – which includes the midfielders and goalkeeper. Before the next fixture, a cup game against Milford Pumas for which the coaches will scrape together whatever players aren't away on holiday, Teddington face a fortnight of examining the past and planning for the future. Up next after Milford are Abbey Rangers and Wimbledon.
TEDDINGTON ATHLETIC Ruby Rudkin, Carla Novakovic, Hannah Hutchison, Millie Theobald, Saskia Brewster, Amy Hallett, Liz Kriebel, Ella Bothamley (1), Emily Coulson (1), Emily Bashford, Ella Dodd (1). Subs Millie MacEacharn, Sadie Day
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