Last Sunday Borough Women entertained local rivals Bexhill United in what proved to be a thrilling afternoon of football at The Connect stadium.

With Daisy Taylor unavailable, Chris day brought in Elena Beck from the u18s to partner Leonie Swaine at centre back, and Nic Baitup returned from injury to the match day squad for the first time since September 24th.

With Bexhill sitting deep and looking to counter, The Sports enjoyed huge spells of possession, but failed to convert multiple chances in the first 20 minutes, and indeed fell behind when they failed to deal with a long ball into the ever dangerous Poppy Harrod. More pressure from Borough followed, but it wasn’t until the 29th minute when they found an equaliser, with Megan Griffiths turning intelligently from Charlotte Gurr’s pinpoint pass, and she then set player of the match Abbie Tucker who drove into the box to finish beyond the Bexhill goalkeeper. Just before the break Izzy Payne was replaced by Becky Simmons, with Payne suffering an ankle injury.

The score stayed 1-1 at half time, with Nic Baitup being introduced for Elena Beck, and Day changing shape to utilise the central areas more. With some brilliant build up play The Sports looked even more dangerous, but couldn’t find the killer touch – until Abbie Tucker drove into the box to set Charlotte Gurr who cleverly played into Becky Simmons, whose reverse pass into Baitup was finished first time. Phoebe Cram then can on for Megan Griffths, which allowed Gurr to push higher.

With Borough on top they made it 3-1 just one minute later, with Tucker again causing Bexhill huge problems on the right, with the ball working its way to captain Kellie Larkin, who pulled out one of her trademark finishes from the edge of the box.

Just one minute later and it was 4-1 as Baitup’s dribbling opened up space for Gurr to finish. With 10 minutes left, Tucker was replaced for yet another Talent Pathway product in Lily Parsons.

Head Coach Chris Day said: “I was delighted with the teams resilience to keep finding space against a team who were determined to just sit in and play long – we knew this would be the case and we have been working hard on the patience needed to keep the ball moving to probe for gaps.

“Abbie Tucker was exceptional, and is a key player for us to unlock space, and I was also delighted we could get Nic Baitup back in the squad after injury”