Wednesday May 7th 1975

Affco Ladybirds Defeat Huntly Thistle

At the Huntly Domain last Sunday the Huntly Thistle Ladies team played against one of the top Waikato teams in the Women’s Northern Soccer League.

Their opponents, Affco from Horotiu, started off as favourites for this game, but found that the local team were not going to be any push-over.

Huntly kicked off into driving rain and were soon in the Affco goal area, where the Huntly forwards soon showed the visitors that things were not going to be easy.

Huntly’s goal came after about 20 minutes, when a ball from Christine Towner found an unmarked Margaret Robinson on the right wing, who jinked her way past the Affco defence and pushed the ball past the oncoming keeper into the back of the net. Huntly ladies tried hard for the remainder of the first half to increase their lead, but could not penetrate the tightened Affco defence. Half-time came with huntly leading 1 goal to 0.

The second half began with three changes in the Thistle team, which proved to be a mistake, as the re-organised locals just would not ‘click’.

Affco opened their goal-scoring with a goal from Angela Davie, who beat the Huntly defence and scored when she caught them flat-footed.

Next it was Sharon Rochford who received a cross from Jan Mead and then slammed the ball past Huntly keeper Teresa Johnson. Teresa was named “player of the day”, a worthy winner, as she played a great game in goal, showing skills which a lot of senior men’s teams would be envious of.

Shortly after, Sandy Trembath made it 3-1 when she scored from about 20 yards out.Huntly’s player/manager Shirley Baranyai, playing at centre-back, took the danger out of a lot of Affco attacks on the very slippery ground.

The final score was 3-1