Fry Club JFC Women v Bristol Ladies Union 1st, 6th September 2026
Our first match of the season on a very hot and windy day in Keynsham, and we were taking along a team so new it had barely been unboxed. BLU 1st must be one of the youngest teams in the league, but we didn’t see any nerves from the youngest players. If anything they were keen to get started. We started the day with a set of hurdles to deal with. One player had to pull out due to illness, and then as most were setting off for Keynsham we received the news that another was being rushed to Minor Injuries, and therefore would also be unavailable. The final hurdle was the traffic, which delayed our warm-up by 20 minutes and saw the referee arriving about 2 minutes before kick off.
For the fist half we were playing into both the sun and the wind, which meant for the first 10 minutes we struggled to get out of our own half, with Fry coming out at full speed and putting us under pressure from the off. But as we began to find our feet we managed to get past the half way line a few times and begin to return some pressure. About 12 minutes in Georgie was struggling with a back injury and had to come off, and unfortunately it was soon clear that she wasn’t going to be able to play any further part in the game, so we were down to a bare 11. Not long later Fry opened the score-line with – let’s face it – a very lucky goal. A ball over the top got a good gust of wind behind it, and with the dry hard ground it bounced high over the head of Imogen who, realising what was about to happen, was already sprinting back toward the goal, but it was too late. Even Mary Earps couldn’t have saved it. BLU managed a few shots on goal during the first half, and we really were playing some of the better football, but Fry managed to put away 2 more goals before half-time.
Despite the score-line we were feeling pretty positive about the game, and the half-time team talk was pretty easy: just keep doing what you’re doing, and try to take shots wherever you can.
The second half got underway, BLU playing down-wind and no longer staring into the sun. We put the pressure on pretty quickly, and both possession and territory were more balanced than the first half. Again we had chances, but we just couldn’t find the back of the net. Most shots were on target, but Fry’s goalkeeper was able to collect. About 15 minutes into the half Libby had to come off for 10 minutes simply because she was overheating, so we were down to 10 players, but with the effort that BLU were putting in you’d be forgiven for thinking that we were at full capacity. As the game progressed we knew this was no longer winnable, but a goal would have been a decent reward, especially because the score-line really didn’t reflect the level of play. Unfortunately it was Fry that got the fourth and final goal.
So the game finished Fry 4 : Blu 0, but we had a lot of positives to take away from the game. Essentially it was the first full game this new team had played together, and they really were together. It bodes well for the season ahead. Player of the Match: Libby, for a strong debut performance both at left-back and centre-back. The Magic Moment came from Lila with a perfectly timed, perfectly weighted pass across field for Imy to pick up.
