The annual Girlies Vs. Goalies game was held on Tuesday 16th July. The night got started with a Roller Disco which was the most popular one we have seen so far with kids of all ages coming to enjoy the night.
Then the main event, Andrew Newman once again kindly compered the evening introducing the teams (see rosters below) and awarding the trophy – a glorious golden creation by one of the mainstays of goaltending in the club, Paul Ellis.

First Period

There was plenty of action right from the start with the ladies opening up the scoring after only a couple of minutes putting shots past first timer goaltender Sam Cockwell. The goalies didn’t let up on the ladies though, with constant, if somewhat occasionally erratic, effort finally netting them a goal finishing the first period 3-1 to the ladies.

In the first break the club held the first ever shooting challenge for the youth attending with a highly engineered plywood design to go in the goal with various sizes of holes in it for people to shoot pucks into, the price was £1 for 5 shots and the higher the score the better the prize!

Second Period

The second period got off to a surprising start with goalies getting back into it with an early goal – much to the crowds delight. The ladies again demonstrated their skills with beautiful stickhandling, hard skating and accurate shooting to maintain their lead and get another 3 goals. The goalies did commit two fouls worthy of penalties in this period one for roughing and another for cross checking, fortunately both were saved to keep the goalies in contention.

The second break was the puck throw contest for the audience and the draw of the raffle.

Final Period

The final period saw both teams starting to show a bit of tiredness with goalies falling and sliding left right and centre (often taking a few ladies with them), fine efforts from both sides saw a goal a-piece in that period for the most part with another penalty awarded to the ladies for handling the puck, which was again saved to keep the game close.  That was until the final minute when a rink invasion from both benches (possibly instigated by the goalies – but thats purely conjecture at this point) led to a minute of insanity which resulted in the goalies netting another goal. The game never really got restarted after that as there were a “few” too many players on the rink. The speed and finesse of the young players showed throughout the game with hard attacking lines from Marvis Chipunza and Lucy McGuire particularly successful with two goals each.

Result – Girlies triumphant!

The match finished up 7-4 to the ladies who take home the trophy this year, showing that their skills, confidence and ability were more than a match for the enthusiasm of the goalies this year. Spectacular effort from players, and we can really see the development of the sport over the last few years.

Thanks of course to all the organisers and spectators who make these evenings a great event, and of course the leisure centre for enabling this to happen again.

The club raised a total of £201 from the various games with some more to come in from the refreshments table.

Thanks again to everyone who came to make this event brilliant – and also special thanks to Andrew Newman and Jill Ford for pictures of the night.