In a lopsided pair of opening rounds, the Goulburn women's hockey team performed poorly last week for a win, and played extremely well on Saturday to come away with a narrow 2-1 loss.
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Up against Central on their home turf at the Goulburn District Hockey Complex, the Goulburn women got off to the perfect start with a goal less than two minutes in to the match.
But that was where fortune stopped favouring the home side, despite their majority of possession and multiple shots on goal.
Coach Naomi Jones felt a mixture of pride in the team's performance and disappointment that the result hadn't gone their way.
"Despite the result, I'm really happy with how they played," Jones said.
"It was much better than our effort last week. They've really grown from our weaknesses last week, we've capitalised on those and we've gotten a lot better this week.
"Our connection as a team [was the main fault], last week we struggled to connect the short pass and the angles and our leading, whereas this week it was really good."
The only difference, Jones added, was the team's ability to convert once they made it to the scoring zone.
"We probably didn't get enough results in the circle there," Jones said.
"We're a very young team, so we're still building on that sort of thing. I thought they actually possessed the ball well and moved the ball well, showed good patience.
"We just didn't get the results up around the circle that we hoped for."
Arguably one of the most impressive aspects of the team's performance was their endurance throughout the match.
Having focused heavily on their fitness during the regular pre-season, the lockdown did not impact the players' ability to give their all throughout the entire match.
"They had a good six-week preseason, they came back and did three days a week," Jones said.
"I guess for them, it's disappointing in that regard because they did a big effort to get much fitter, and I think you can see the difference from this year to last year."
This weekend, on Saturday August 1, the Goulburn women will take on United in Canberra.
Goulburn will go into the match as narrow favourites, as United have lost all three of their fixtures so far in the season, but will be determined to claim their first win.
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