Luton Town Ladies 1st XI v Leighton Buzzard 1st XI

Luton Town Ladies 1st XI were back to winning ways this weekend with a convincing 2-1 victory against rivals Leighton Buzzard 1s. With Buzzard a mere 4 points ahead of them in the league Luton were determined to narrow the gap and they did so in style with one of their best performances of the season so far. Typically Luton, never seeming to want to make things easy for themselves, let Leighton pull ahead within the first ten minutes. However the home side would not maintain their lead for long. The saying "don't you just love it when a plan comes together" was never more apt than when Luton won their first penalty corner. Predicting that Leighton would expect a first time strike Luton cunningly slipped the ball to the right and with the defence wrong footed all that was left was for Beth Carlisle to calmly slot the ball past the keeper into the far corner. Carlisle was also intrinsic in the build up to Luton's second, a well worked passage of play down the right culminating in a fine first time Strike from current top scorer Suzanne Starkey. Leighton by no means threw in the towel and will be disappointed not to have made more of their numerous penalty corner opportunities. It was encouraging that Luton did not lose their focus and credit should go to all players, but particularly to Kerri Stinton, Luton's player of the match who worked tirelessly in both attack and defence and who's excellent performance helped spur the visitors to victory. A well deserved 2-1 result puts Luton back in contention for the title at the half way stage of the season, just 4 points behind league leaders Saffron Walden who they face at home next week. Despite a decent contribution Beth Carlisle could not escape the mare of the match award after Vlad the Impaler had seemingly got a bit peckish overnight and enthusiastically feasted on her callow flesh leaving her scarred for life (or at least marked for a couple of days!).